Élan & Confabulation
by Saiyan Angie
Summary: Oddity is to be expected in East Blue, but very little could prepare someone for the confusing mess Luffy now called her life. She could probably sort it out if she wasn't so keen on jumping into alternate realities, borrowing strength, and getting herself stabbed. (Fem!Luffy)
1. We Are Legion

**The Beginning**

"I'm going to kick your ass." Her voice was firm for all of its brightness. The utterance was the last of a long tongue-lashing. Its words hung in the air, articles of undeniable truth that came from a source of juxtaposition.

The aforementioned source was a pale young woman in a straw hat, covered by a simple set of summer garments that hung baggily off her person and did her no favors from an aesthetic standpoint. Her hair was unkept, dark, and unimpressive.

She was so, _so_ very small, and the collective gasp greeting her announcement was therefore unsurprising.

"Are… are you _insane_?" came her equally unassuming companion's reply, his eyes widening during a single drawn-out moment. He was short, ruddy, and wearing glasses that had seen better days. His clothes were dirty, stained, and thread-bare. His hair had grown out of the style it had been accustomed to and become a stringy purple mane. For once, his voice wasn't trembling. It was hard to tremble when incredulity came to call.

The young woman's answer couldn't be immediate. Life isn't a turn-based eventuality. It happens simultaneously. Thus, an action had to be the reply.

A spiked club of enormous size and mass came down in what would have been a vicious demonstration of physical might, had it not been for the target's lack of cooperation.

 _This_ target was not a standard bag of flesh, bones, and meat. It didn't shatter, spurt, or expire. No.. it (or, rather ' _she_ ') merely smiled as the weapon made contact and hid her facial features, only damaging the precious object on her head.

Coby, for indeed this was her new friend's name, found he was screaming until the adrenaline left him a shivering clump on his knees. Relief didn't bring him back up to his feet, but it flooded in like a welcome tide on a sweltering day. He had been afraid to lose someone so driven, no matter how recent their acquaintance.

He should have known better than to be afraid. She had already demonstrated her powers to him earlier, and those abilities a devil fruit bestowed were never to be taken lightly.

Coby's reaction was not shared with the enemy herself, though to paint their opponent's many followers with the same emotional response would be irresponsible.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?!" screamed the dime-novel villain known as Alvida, her voice heavy with use, spite, and frustration. Her shock was coupled with the fury of one deprived of a kill. Her pride had so recently been wounded, her self-imposed bubble forced by the insults of a mere girl that should have been little more than a twig crushed underfoot. Indeed, the differences in stature and the appearance of physical strength between the two would have guaranteed it in a normal world. This was not that place, however, and Alvida's sheer girth, strength, and physical maturity meant nothing against the workings of fate.

This universe stood along many other universes. In many, a boy stood in her place and announced the truth as well as he knew it. In others, she stood and replied the same standard answer. However, here and now, this creature had different thoughts and reactions. A small increase in intelligence could do a great deal for someone's idioms. A large boost, on the other hand, would change everything. However, self-awareness on an enormous scale, coupled with brief visions of other worlds and outcomes…. That changed everything, and even the young woman herself couldn't understand why. She only blessed her luck that she had the wisdom to withstand the barrage of the multiplicity she experienced when she accessed what had to be a long-dead and hopefully forbidden art.

She saw every self stand in her place and reply. She saw them attack. She saw a brief glimpse of both the future and the past. She felt a hundred different bodies within her.

She closed her eyes serenely. As always, she had both initiated and withstood the sensation in less than a second.

"I am Monkey D. Luffy… an _avatar_ of destruction." she said, far more wistful than she should have been, having felt the satisfying crunch of this caricature of selfishness only moments before.

There was no need to announce her attack. Perhaps other times, she would need the rush that action brought, but she had just said it through a legion of mouths.

Her arms stretched, and the added thrust and momentum brought incredible force to the beat-down to be administered.

She laughed. Oh, goodness, how she laughed… It was dangerous to cheat like this, she knew. It was taxing, in the long-run. She could only access this ability a few times in a lunar cycle, and it was incredibly toxic to her sanity. Her life was her own, and she didn't have to steal experiences from her compatriots to enjoy them or even anticipate basic turns of events, but the security that this knowledge brought was so comforting. Perhaps it was even addicting to feel the satisfaction of herself magnified fifty-fold… but the blows had to come, regardless. Was indulgence here an act of narcissism? Definitely.

This hadn't been an attack initiated entirely for her own gratification, however. This was a battle on a ship that had been attacking an innocent civilian vessel. They had presumably murdered people. They had a kidnapped child they kept as a hostage and slave implicated in their crimes. He had been psychologically stunted by their actions and she had come as a savior… but only after requiring her little companion to assert himself. She had asked him to insult his tormentor when she had him at her mercy.

Coby had to have thought he was going to die only moments prior to this, standing before his captor without the power to harm or stop her. The announcement of Luffy's violent intentions had merely been a reaction to the entirety of his unfortunate circumstances. Now, due to both of their actions, he would be free. He would know the liberty of a man who had been imprisoned under false pretenses and then released. Greeted correctly, his future could lead to the revival of a dream he had thought dead. He could become a _marine._ If Luffy could entertain thoughts of being the Pirate King, gender roles be damned, it wasn't that strange for him to desire the role of a protector of laws and the was a pity, then, that he was about to learn what a hopeless person the heroine of this tale could be. There are no perfect saviors.

They had destroyed Alvida's reputation, pummeled those who needed pummeling, and set out on a raft with only a few provisions. There had been a moment of brief intensity as Luffy locked eyes with another maiden in another raft as the two made their way onto the drink, but Coby didn't ask what brought it on and he, at least, forgot about it quickly.

Luffy did not. She had memorized every curve of that person's face and matched it to something she had brought upon herself in a vision years ago. Something important, to say the least, but there was nothing to be done for it now.

"Where are we going?" Coby asked, his youth showing in his need for an authority to direct him, and who better to ask than aspiring pirate royalty? Surely someone such as Luffy could-

Luffy interrupted any train of thought he may have had by laughing uproariously, throwing her hands up in a gesture that clearly translated to 'I don't know and have made no plans as a result'.

"What?!" Coby could feel his energy draining, but Luffy looked at him with warm eyes and a kind of trust that put him more at ease than was, perhaps, wise. Still, he had to know why she had come so unprepared for anything resembling an outline for her plans…

"Why on earth wouldn't you have maps or at least an idea of where you're going?!"

"I didn't think it was that important." she said simply, her expression unchanging.

"Do you at least know how to get to the next island? Can you navigate at all?" the boy felt both desperation and exasperation rise in his tone.

"Nope. Had better things to learn." came a laconic reply.

Coby became visibly upset. "WHY?! Why wouldn't you bother to learn it?! I'm a fisherman's boy and barely did _any_ sailing and still learned the basics. Are you trying to die?"

There was more accusation there than he had intended.

"Of course not. If I die, I die," Luffy said for the second time that day. "As long as I've done everything to the best of my ability, there's no shame in that."

She paused, then added, "I'm going to have people for that, Coby."

"Your plan is to run around naked and exposed until you find a navigator, then?" Coby queried, his disdain for this plan obvious.

"No. I'm going to run around almost naked and exposed for the rest of my life. But my wardrobe isn't in question here!" Luffy exclaimed.

Coby got quiet for a moment, thinking Luffy could, perhaps, be that dense. He also spent a little too long thinking about the sort of thing that an adolescent could be forgiven for, eyeing her nearly-exposed breasts. He was surprised when his silence was broken by her voice again.

"That was a joke." she stated curtly, not really concerned with where he was looking. "I 'm not going to stop running around in this number, sure, but I know what you meant."

"Um...,"

"Look, Coby, I know I have to depend on others to survive. I'm depending on you right now, and I'll depend on my navigator when I find them. If you want the best or to even BE the best, you have to make sacrifices."

She looked up at the clouds. "I tried, you know, but reading maps didn't come easily. I checked… _other_ people in my shoes… and most came to the same conclusion. If you can give someone else a job you stink at and they love, why not? I mean, less charting meant more punching!"

"There's one flaw in that logic, Ms. Luffy."

"What's that?"

"I don't love to chart courses or anything. You kinda didn't bother asking."

"Meh." she shrugged, pretending her fingers were monsters chasing birds across the sky. They opened and closed like maws.

"You aren't listening anymore, are you?"

"Meh."

While hitting a girl was supposed to be a taboo, it was very satisfying to smack Luffy's head with a closed fist. It didn't hurt her, anyway. She responded in kind anyway, though.

He didn't have her imperviousness, and though she clearly pulled her punch, it still hurt.

"What'd you do that for?!" he whined.

"Felt like it," Luffy said, yawning.

"Hmph." Coby huffed, then gave a condescending look to the reclining girl. It was difficult to guess her age, but he'd posit it in the late teens. "Well, at least I managed to grab a map. We aren't too far away from an island. We can get there long before we run out of-"

He was interrupted by the sound of loud chewing. "-food and water and WILL YOU STOP EATING?!"

Luffy paused, her mouth still open wide with an entire apple dangling above her gaping maw.

"Look, we have to make food last out here." Coby chided.

She nodded, but still jammed the whole fruit into her mouth and chewed it without breaking eye contact. It was… rather disturbing. Her jaw had to distend just a tad and he swore she didn't blink even once.

Coby resisted the urge to throw her into ocean, knowing full well what could happen to her if he tried to do so. Not that she'd let him, of course. Still, he took some solace in knowing that their destination was so close by. Maybe, he thought guiltily, there was someone else he could pawn her off on.

Thankfully, there were many such people in the world.

* * *

A/N: I live. I live and my chapters are short and I know damned well that Luffy is ooc. That's kinda the point.

I mean, all of us have a bit of postmodernism in us here, and we appropriate things as we see fit.

Before any of you explode, I need you to know that TBOO has a little problem.

I forgot most of the plot of Naruto and can't really read subs with any ease anymore.


	2. We Are Awakening

A/N: I don't own One Piece. Also, trigger warning for a little self-mutilation in this chapter.

* * *

Coby's mouth moved a lot as they approached their destination. Hungry as she was, Luffy had a hard time paying attention. The wrinkles of worry on his forehead and the general tone the boy took with her spoke of a warning.

" _-they call him a demon in human flesh-_ ," Ah. There were the words.

" _-kills just for fun-_ ," She closed her eyes, feeling the breeze on her face.

"Roronoa Zoro."

The world held still. If nothing else, these words caught her attention, bringing her mind to a much darker time in her life and her connection to complete strangers. It was all she could do not to shake with anticipation.

Her gifts had given her that name long before she ever left her childhood home in search of adventure. At that time, all she had wanted was an escape or some form of hope. She had been young, you see, and left to her own devices on a vast swath of land with only outlaws and two vagabond brothers for company. It had been a simpler era without access to her gifts, but happiness wasn't entirely out of her reach.

Ace and Sabo were magnificent companions, though the former had started their relationship by loathing her. She remembered his stares at their table during the evenings those first few months. There had only been a couple of oil lamps to reveal what food the makeshift family scrounged for themselves. Unfortunately, whatever luck their caretaker Dadan and her goons had with plundering travellers never translated to a better life to their wards.

Ace's expression was intense when their eyes locked. His freckled face strained. For all the effort Gol D. Roger's son placed into ignoring her at all other times, he couldn't pretend she didn't exist during their meals. His brows furrowed and beads of perspiration trickled down his temples regardless of the ambient temperature. Luffy would learn later that he had been trying to summon some imaginary power to wish her away.

She never, _ever_ , hated him for it. It upset her, as she was a child with no one else her own age to confide in. However, she didn't gain anything in her life from giving up easily. Instead, she sought to impress him. To _make_ him care about her, despite everything she'd ever been told about humanity's inability to control other people. Somewhere in her infantile mind the though had made sense. If he looked hungry, she ran into the dangerous forest and hunted (often to disastrous results; when she would come to she didn't know whom had rescued her). If he was tired, she sought comfortable places for him to rest. If he was frustrated to the point of physically assaulting trees, she cheered for him until he shouted to the heavens and ran into the wilderness to a place he assumed she couldn't find.

She proved him wrong and had the acquaintance of his friend Sabo to show for it. It was to the two of them she would demonstrate her mettle. She defended their secrets to a crew of violent adults, forcing the boys to rescue her and Ace to finally accept that she could exist alongside him. Sabo followed his example. Fraternity bound them through an oath.

They did everything together. They fought, hunted, bathed, scavenged, and trained in a pack. Looking back on those years, Luffy had to admit they were the best of her life.

Then, as all good things were wont to do, they ended.

The murder of a loved one acted as a storm that sent her reeling. Perhaps it was that trauma that awakened the multiplicity for the first time. She was screaming Sabo's name in the shadow of a burning ship and her eyes were opened to the sensation of howling as legion.

Her grief magnified and she dug fingernails into her skin until they bled. The injury brought premonitions while Ace embraced her insensate form. The action was supposed to be one of placation and mutual comfort, but in a very real sense, the sister he knew ceased to be.

She wasn't invested in inhabiting her own body. She saw one of her (a male), limp weakly with Ace in tow to Dadan's cabin. She saw them shiver under a shared cover, safe. This version of her had already started to heal by accepting the shock of the tragedy.

Luffy envied him. She watched but was unable to completely remember why.

She remained him for too long. For the first time and last, she spent years in one of her heads. He named champions as comrades and they loved each other dearly. They grew from experiences and had an awesome vessel. She had to see this through as him, she had to!

It cost her dearly to remain as long as she did. The vision ended whether she wanted it to or not.

She wanted the other life back. She wanted his friends, his _life_. Her tiny mind desired nothing more than to _erase_ him for not suffering in that moment.

How could she be one person now? How could she return to herself? She was alive and Sabo was _BURNING._ She could smell roasting wood and charred flesh mixing with garbage.

Ace's tear-filled eyes widened in horror as his sister began trying to rip her own skin off with her teeth. If she could just _rip_ this body _apart._ If she couldn't throw her flesh away, she would never be _him_ again and she would never be _whole_ and all of the wisdom of a child said this hell would never _stop_!

All of her strength made this a messy endeavor and there was a small amount of mutilation before good sense brought her brother to leap on top of her in a furious heap.

She resisted, drawing on the other self's muscle memory. Her skin became superheated and she brought bloodied fists to his face. Like a feral beast, she howled. She felt the rippling of flesh. She _hurt_ him. She had to! He wasn't letting her go back!

He didn't take Luffy's abuse standing down. Ace fought back with as much fervor and passion as was possible given their situation, though his attacks did very little but refocus his younger sister's animal rage. His only fortune lay in the fact she was terribly damaged and ultimately collapsed.

She didn't awaken for days, and when Luffy finally opened her eyes, she couldn't bring herself to even thank Dadan for watching over her. The lack of communication within family lines followed the same pattern. Ace avoided eye contact with her, withdrawing to his makeshift fort for hours.

Luffy ignored this. Her goal hadn't changed. Rather, she now had a more organized plan to get to another self's consciousness. where she would escape the pain.

Luffy survived every day with Ace at a proverbial distance. She felt him close, but they continued their silence. Each child only did what they had to. She waited patiently for him to slip away every day and ripped her flesh again with all of her morbid hope.

For days nothing came of this but waves of pain from everyone involved. No one spoke of the injuries or the blood under dirty fingernails. No one talked about the rapidly thinning child in their midst. Enabled as she was, within two weeks Luffy was everyone once more. She searched through the stream of consciousness and found her previous path.

She felt his love for his life and crew. She _became_ it.

She tried to memorize their names.

She traced the contour of every face.

She reveled in the destruction of their enemies.

She stayed longer. She stayed until she saw the one thing that could hurt more than Sabo's demise.

Ace died for her. She wouldn't remember just how when she pushed back against the vision of her own accord, but the perspective of an addict left her and she was screaming her brother's name with the scent of charred flesh newly in her nostrils.

Birds flew away from the clearing where she had called the multiplicity. Luffy fell to her knees and broke into sobs, her bloodied fingers now staunching the flow from injuries she had previously fought so fiercely to sustain.

Everything from the vision was still a dream, and as all nightmares, it faded somewhat in the light of day. It was no longer the body in her arms, the oppressive sunlight, or the taste of tragedy in her mouth... but it was a looping taste of catastrophe.

She pounded the ground. She didn't want it anymore, but some of it was still persisted. Distantly, she knew she was still calling for Ace; her voice grew hoarse with the effort.

He came. Bless him; he hadn't abandoned her entirely. Her sobbing screams had summoned him at a run and he knelt down in front of her, eyes mirroring her pain.

Her words stopped and their arms rounded one another.

She couldn't stop telling him she was sorry.

He let her apologize, but thought the words and tears came from a different source than he assumed. She never corrected him. The Luffy before him was not the same as the one at his side a month before, but she still loved him. She was still his sister.

She didn't scar much. The rubber skin was to thank for that. Time also had her treating the gift of multiplicity with more caution. She learned its patterns and limited her time as many or someone else, but fell prey to one failure that would mar her innocence as long as she persisted:

She couldn't stop abusing it entirely.

On some level, she knew it could be useful. Perhaps she could even use it to alter the future… or at least enjoy a moment with much more fervor. But she would never live as them again; she would no longer escape or hide.

She promised Ace this in his sleep, just as she promised to protect him.

They grew closer through mourning. They learned to do everything as a duo rather than a trio. Time, by its very nature, moved on.

Now, as a far more mature Luffy stared at Coby's mouth continue to move, she remembered all of this and more over the course of several seconds due to the nigh-mystical nature of the human brain. Roronoa Zoro had been one of her other self's most important companions. There had been a bond there nearly beyond comprehension, and she would be meeting him.

Granted, this would be a different version of him, but she doubted he deviated much from what she remembered. It helped that her memories were more images and a feeling of comfort associated with his name rather than exact details and events. It gave her leeway to accept many details, whether she believed them or not.

She didn't believe everything coming out of Coby's mouth. She caught that this Zoro was a bad man, for example. In all probability, she was right.

Perhaps this was why she strode towards the marine base in Shells Town so confidently after Coy and she had moored their tiny boat, dragging a nervous Coby along by the scruff of his shirt.

"I'm not ready! LUFFY! Put me down! I need to go into the base of my own accord and my clothes aren't even clean! First impressions are important if I want to be trained as a marine and PUT ME DOWN!" He knew that she wouldn't release him unless the whim struck her, but he had to attempt to mount an escape.

He was so involved in fretting about every way he could be rejected by his potential superior officers that he barely registered the fear on the everyday citizenry's faces when he mentioned the marines. Register it he did, however, and he was forced to think about what just might be causing these townspeople to be so skittish.

Even once the initial shock was over, he noticed a few familiar signs of oppression. Their faces were downturned. They didn't smile unless they were selling something. There were probably more to be found, but observation was hard work when one was literally being dragged on a gravel road.

"Luffy, the people here are acting pretty strange." He announced as the marine base transitioned from a distant landmark to a looming shadow.

"Hmm." She hummed. Anyone else might think it was an acknowledgment of Coby's words, but he had a suspicion.

"You're not really listening, are you?"

"Hmmmmmm."

He sighed as they came to an abrupt halt in front of the looming gates of their destination. Coby immediately straightened his posture and started to dust himself off in preparation for anyone who might come striding through those doors. His expectations were not in line with reality, however. Under the noonday sun, the courtyard was eerily silent.

Luffy left his side and scrambled up a wall with only shallow footholds after kicking off her sandals. He supposed that it had something to do with the gripping power of her rubber limbs that she managed to ascend so easily.

"Hey, Coby! Check this out!" she called. Knowing it probably wasn't wise, he started to voice an objection only to let it die in his throat. She wouldn't listen, anyway.

He eyed the wall and approached. He rubbed his hands together and tried to copy Luffy's climbing technique as best he could, but ended up just flailing against the stone.

She looked back at him, and in a burst of understanding, her left arm elongated and brought him beside her. He followed her eye-line back to her previous locus of interest.

"Is that…?" he asked under his breath.

"The bounty hunter guy? Probably." Luffy said with a shrug, though her eyes spoke of an intense interest that Coby mistook for dangerous teenage infatuation.

"We should probably leave before he sees us. I'm betting we aren't supposed to be up here." Coby pressed, looking from his new friend to the prisoner.

If the bounty hunter noticed them from his perch, he made no signal of it.

"You might be right, Coby." Luffy said quietly. Hope swelled in Coby's chest only to be swiftly crushed. "-but I'm going to go talk to him."

"Why? WHY?! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" He hadn't meant to yell, but Luffy was so ridiculously stubborn!

Amused, Luffy smiled in such a way that her self-satisfaction practically bled through her exposed teeth. The boy opened his mouth to give in to her baiting when a hoarse voice interrupted.

"Would you two just SHUT UP? I'm trying to concentrate."

Coby felt the hair on the back of his neck rise in alarm, but Luffy shifted her attention to the speaker with an airy laugh. She flung herself over the fences, pirouetting through the air like an acrobat and failing to stick the landing like the amateur she was.

"Hey, there! You're Roronoa Zoro, right?" she asked, standing hardly three feet away from the supposedly homicidal captive. That insufferable smile never left her face. Coby's jaw dropped.

Zoro looked up to the waif that had entered his place of humiliation with disdain. Through his exhaustion and near-delirium, she appeared to morph into several different shapes before settling on that of a woman in clothes that any fashionista would travel back in time in order to destroy even the idea of their existence. "Yeah. Fuck off."

She stepped closer, the stench of his misery and filth assaulting her nostrils. "You're being tortured." she said simply, the grin she had upheld fading and replaced with something far more pained.

Zoro wasn't comfortable with what he assumed was pity.

"Leave. They'll kill you if they see you here." he growled, voice cracking.

"Let them try." she said, pulling a small gourd out of a hilariously oversized pocket on her baggy shorts. He closed his eyes against his envy and temptation. The agreement he'd made with that bastard clearly stipulated he couldn't drink or eat, but...

The water was forced into his mouth when she unceremoniously shoved the receptacle between his chapped lips. It was warm, but he accepted it eagerly.

Coby brought his palm to his face. This could hardly get more absurd. Then, he felt something contact the wall next to him. The next thing he knew, a small girl was clambering up it with a basket of riceballs.

What was it about criminals that made them attract such aid?! He'd heard about how females were supposed to like bad boys, but this was inexcusable!

"Get away from here. Leave the bad man BE!" Coby ordered.

The girl looked at him and just glared.

"You don't know anything." she accused, voice desperate.

She was clearly afraid, but took a deep breath and looked past the fence. She relaxed when she saw Luffy already in the enclosure. It didn't take much to see she wasn't a marine and had Zoro's interests in mind as she was currently giving him life-saving water.

"Hey, Lady!" the little girl called after a cursory look told her the guards were clearly busy elsewhere.

Luffy looked up from Zoro, whose attention on the liquid was still unbroken.

"Hm?"

"Give him these, okay?"

The child wrapped the towel around her riceballs tightly and tossed the basket at the stranger.

"Sure thing!" Luffy laughed, catching the receptacle in an outstretched free hand.

Zoro had finished the water by this point and was sputtering from the gourd still shoved in his maw.

When Luffy pulled it away, he coughed momentarily and gave a frustrated grunt.

"Oh, for fuck's sake...," was all he managed to say.

"Hey. Shut up and eat these." Luffy said, stowing the gourd and pulling out a riceball. She shoved it at his mouth rather than in it, but the food still managed to make it down his throat without choking him to death.

He started to protest, but another one followed.

Coby saw a look of pure happiness on the little girl waiting on the ladder.

"Why?" he asked. "I mean, I can't guess why Luffy's helping; but why did you make him this food?"

"He's a good guy. They punished him for saving me." It was a vague allegation, but given the circumstantial evidence, Coby began to piece together the political situation on the island. Namely, that the people lived in fear of the soldiers. That meant that Luffy was feeding an unguarded folk hero.

Something was wrong with that sentence. It was foolish to carry on as if there wasn't, but the actors of the scene gave it their all.

Luffy was about to shove the final onigiri into Zoro's mouth when a voice broke the ambiance.

"It is a crime punishable by death to aid a condemned prisoner!"

She stowed the last morsel back into its basket and turned to face the approaching marines.

"It's shitty to force someone to starve and sully themselves while bound to some pieces of wood!" she called back, her hands balling into fists.

"Hey, he volunteered for his, you know." The apparent ringleader, a blonde youth who puberty had been cruel to glowered at her and pointed his finger accusingly. "You're ruining his bargain!"

Zoro's eyes widened and Luffy heard the breathing pattern that corresponded with abject terror.

"Eh? I don't give a crap." She growled. "Was this thing your idea?"

"It's only natural. He raised a hand against me for those fools. Everyone involved with that incident should have been executed on the spot, but we decided this would work out better. He only had to survive for a month without food and water."

The young man laughed, his mirth as unattractive as the rest of him. "Not that all that matters now. Captain Morgan's orders are absolute."

"You're Captain Morgan?" Luffy asked skeptically. He was too young. He didn't even wear a proper uniform.

"He's my father. But let's not concern him with this, hm?" His eyes shifted sideways to the spectators on the wall.

"Clearly, this was a conspiracy. I could tell him, but… I think I'll just make an example of you and be done with it."

He leveled his finger at the woman before him anew.

"STOP!" Zoro yelled. "I threatened her, Helmeppo! She doesn't have anything to do with this!"

Coby's knuckles were white on the stone wall. The little girl whimpered.

Luffy breathed in through her nostrils with verve.

"You're a terrible liar, Roronoa." the young man chuckled. It was with gravitas that the youth raised a hand with three fingers raised. "3,"

"GET OUT OF THERE NOW!" Coby yelled, knowing well that a countdown to death had been initiated.

"2," A finger retreated from view.

"Run! Forget about me and RUN!" Zoro bellowed. His pleas confirmed Luffy's first impression.

"1." Helmeppo's final digit lingered, hesitant.

"Everything will be okay, Zoro." she said gently, as if she were speaking to a child. She stretched out her arms and formed what Coby immediately recognized was the most effective position of a human shield. The boy was shocked. He genuinely believed Luffy to be heroic, but not on this level. This was a favor to a stranger and therefore a foolish waste of life by common convention.

Coby's breath caught in his throat and he reached out to cover the child's eyes. Time slowed. Captain Morgan's son's hand had returned to a closed fist.

" _Fire._ "


	3. We Are Not Ghosts

A/N: I'm getting better at this perspective thing. Darn, but my writing skills were rusty. Feel free to leave constructive criticism. It may be the only way I further my craft. Mind you, this is a rough draft. Provided I finish the East Blue Saga, I will probably reformat this.

Also, I noticed that I got the duration of Zoro's sentence wrong in the last chapter. It was a month, not ten days. Bleck.

* * *

Roronoa Zoro was understandably unhappy. He was a disciplined man who had agreed to put his life on the line for a couple of villagers. _His_ life (of which he was quite fond, no matter what the public perception of his persona by the rest of East Blue). It had been his own decision, and it had seemed a wise one in light of the circumstances. Helmeppo would string him up, yes, but Zoro believed he could survive the sentence. One month without sustenance could be achieved by someone as strong as he, though it was hellish prospect.

In accordance with his expectations, hellish it was. Every single inch of him hurt or itched; a sensation of weakness was overtaking him as his body was ravaged by loss of muscle mass; he was forced to wallow in his own filth, and to top it all off, he had seen impossible things in the crucifixion yard in the few weeks as his mind began to lose touch with reality.

The dead walked on the hard ground soundlessly at seemingly random intevals. Some of the specters were friends. Kuina and Saga, the oldest of his friends, approached him with wide smiles and open arms. They spoke to him for long hours in his misery whilst he ignored them, certain that acknowledging the two would be his end. After a time, they would disappear, only to come back to his side when he awoke from a tenuous sleep.

Unfortunately, Kuina and Saga were not alone. Though he didn't regret a single sword-stroke, Roronoa Zoro had killed many, many people throughout the last few years. They had been hardened criminals with innocent blood on their hands, but it had still been his choice to end their lives.

Though their phantoms were legion, they were easier to ignore than his friends, as all they did was shriek, threaten, and prophesize his imminent demise. Still, those rare naps grew more sporadic as their insufferable noise rose in volume as the days went by.

With these irregular happenings, it had become nearly impossible to keep track of how much time had elapsed. It was only by the virtue of Helmeppo's daily beatings and that small girl from the inn visiting the fence every night with reassurances and apologies that he knew how many days had passed.

27.

27 days that would have killed a lesser man had already come and gone. He had proven the specters of his past wrong. He was so close to victory that it erased some of the searing agony inside his living corpse. So, why?

 _Why?_

The young woman was in front of him now, her arms outstretched. She had ruined _everything_ and then robbed him of his right to be furious with her by virtue of her selflessness. She had taken his pride as a man and crushed it by the simple act of nullifying his suffering. Then, she just had to mitigate his willing sacrifice by throwing another life at it.

" **FIRE!"**

He counted six shots and was certain five of them hit her. Only one had made it past her by nature of her size and he knew that because it had whizzed past his right ear into the sky behind him. He registered that he was screaming with surprising fervor for someone who had only recently been on death's door.

He bit down on his lower lip. Everything still tasted of sweet, sticky rice but he knew bile would follow as the girl strained, shook, and fell forward onto her face.

"Luffy! LUFFY! Oh, no… nonononono…!" Her companion was calling now, and Zoro stole a guilty glance at him and the bawling child beside him. His hands were shaking in front of her eyes, and angry tears ran in little rivulets down his face.

So, now she had a name. Zoro made a note of it so he could find her on the other side and give her a firm talking to, if nothing else.

Gun barrels were retrained on him, but Helmeppo waved the weapons down, apparently satisfied.

"I think Daddy's justice has been served sufficiently now. Wouldn't you agree, Zoro?"

He gave the outward appearance of laughing, but the addressed prisoner could sense a quiver in the adolescent's voice. Perhaps he hadn't actually though people would die if he ordered them to be shot up. Hell, that wasn't Zoro's problem. He didn't have the time or desire to psychoanalize the tyrant's son. He did have some colorful comments he would love to substitute for the desire agreement, however.

Well, perhaps using the term 'comments' here was disingenuous.

They were laconic threats he had every right to go through with. Zoro would enjoy the actions therein far more than he should. Unfortunately, he had to bite down his replies. Perhaps if, even after all this, the boy was willing to let their promise stand, it would still be worth it to stay on the cross; to forget that another martyr was added to the pyre of a single dictator's influence.

Coby's shouted words had degenerated into some sort of stricken howling. Maybe that woman had been his relative?

Zoro looked down at Luffy's still form on the ground and fought his impulse to make matters worse. Instead, his words were measured.

"Are you going to hurt them?" he asked, jerking his head to refer to their audience of two.

Helmeppo paused, driving his shoe into the dirt as if he was snuffing an imaginary cigarette. A hand rose to his lips and his eyes darted from his newest victim to the unscathed basket with a single riceball remaining. "Clearly.. that woman was the only one actually breaking the law, yes? It is enough that she has been made an example of."

He gritted his teeth into a forced smile. "So.. er.. three days, right?"

Zoro stared blankly before managing a feeble. "I guess."

Helmeppo's complexion was turning even paler as the reality of what he'd done was settling in.

It _almost_ quelled the rising bloodlust. Almost.

His men stared vacantly ahead, playing the part of obedient automatons well enough until they betrayed a shred of humanity.

Their shoulders gave in such a way that demonstrated relief as Helmeppo turned and stalked back to the base. They followed, leaving the remaining three living beings in the clearing be.

As they disappeared into the distance, the crucifixion yard fell into a deathly silence (with no pun intended). It was only punctuated by the occassional sob.

The wanted man again turned to Coby, seemingly at a loss. What was he supposed to do? Apologize?

Honestly, there was only one sane course of action (sane being a relative term, here).

"Leave. There's no reason for you two to stay here." he growled. "Leave and don't turn back. They'll kill you if you enter. You've seen proof."

Coby hiccuped through thick tears. "But… Luffy! Are they just going to leave her here?!"

"How the hell would I know?!" His voice wasn't so dark or steady anymore. Coby suspected that if he had been properly hydrated, Zoro might have been crying. "Just GO!"

Three days with a dead body. Three days with food and a human sacrifice lying mere feet from his cross. Now, _that_ was a sadistic punishment. He hadn't thought this could get any worse, but listening to Coby and the little girl leave… it would be an understatement to say he knew better.

He just didn't think things would degenerate so quickly.

"Goddammit." he muttered, feeling his ravaged muscles shake. "GODDAMMIT!"

Time passed slowly in his renewed solitude, but the small amount of food and water he'd received seemed to keep the phantoms away. At least, that's what he believed until nightfall, at which point the cadaver got up and began to dust her clothes off, rigor mortis be damned.

Yes, Zoro doubted his sanity at that moment… and yes, he had initially thought her part of the same phenomenon that had produced Kuina and Saga's smiling faces. Not the least because she was grinning at him right then with adoring eyes.

The he noticed the lack of blood on the ground and the fact that she wasn't exactly being as quiet as his previous visitors. Granted, she wasn't making a great deal of noise, but she still moved the dirt with her bare feet.

She didn't sport any obvious wounds. Oddly, her clothes had clearly been penetrated by the bullets, but if they hadn't entered her body, where had they gone? That answer, too, lay on the ground. Five casings, five bullets… they had been partially buried like she had somehow planted them as one would bamboo chutes. But when? And how?

"Okay, good. I had to be sure those jerkwads weren't hanging around." She murmured, looking up at the base and shaking her head at a newly-erected statue looming over the rooftop. "Damn, but these guys are bad at their jobs."

She shrugged helplessly. "Didn't even bother to check me over."

Zoro's voice came back to him as he decided she was, in fact, alive. "...What _are_ you?"

"Shh." She brought her finger to her lips and knelt down to pick up the basket from before. "That's not important right now, Roronoa."

She had his rapt attention, but didn't explain anything until after she'd held the last sweet onigiri in front of his lips. This time, he ate it on his own terms while Luffy scanned the dark courtyard. The marines clearly didn't dedicate too much manpower to keeping proper watch.

"Sorry for earlier. I had no idea you'd been captured on purpose." That was a lie, but not a complete one. The circumstances came back to her only simultaneously with the action. Deja vu was the closest thing to compare the experience to, as the memories she'd drawn upon were old and warped by the passage of time and were none too cooperative when she actually _needed_ them. Such was the price of having used her abilities on the hedonistic pleasures of punching someone in the face with infinite gusto. "Seems you are a good guy, after all."

She stepped back and looked sidelong at the marine base. Zoro couldn't stop staring. She'd done everything earlier with the set goal of finding his moral compass? Bullshit. That woman had already decided he was worth saving. Either that, or she cared about human rights more than any governing body he'd ever heard of. Either way, he could see things through her baggy top that he really shouldn't be able to from this angle.

"Zoro." she said quietly, her tone wistful. "Come away with me."

He made a strangled coughing sound, jumping to the wrong conclusion immediately. This was sudden, strange, and completely unacceptable. He'd half a mind to tell her off right then and there for being a shallow tart for trying to elope with a stranger, but she didn't let him finish the thought.

"Join my crew."

Ah. That made more sense.

"You're a bounty hunter, too?" he asked after he regained his composure.

"Nope. Pirate." she responded, moving to one of the bonds holding his arms in place.

"Then why the hell would I join you?!" He hissed, still being careful to keep his voice down. "I have my own ambitions, and I'm not going to throw them away to be a goddamned privateer."

She stopped short of messing with the ropes, to his relief. Her eyes lit up like the sunrise. "Really? What are they?"

He smiled despite himself, appreciating the absurdism of the situation around them. "I'm going to be the world's greatest swordsman."

"Awesome!" The word lingered in the air momentarily. "I wouldn't expect anything else from the chosen first mate of the future king of pirates." She said this with all of the surity he himself had just demonstrated, catching Zoro off-guard once more.

"The fuck are you talking about?" his whisper was harsh and punctuated with laughter. "This is a terrible time for joking around!"

"Who's joking?" Luffy asked, her face falling. She pointed at herself and said, "I'm dead serious."

The look of puzzlement remained, but Zoro knew better than to mock a female for a supposedly gender-blocked dream.

"King of the Pirates? You?" He was asking for confirmation, not jeering. Thankfully, Luffy understood that and simply nodded.

"Good luck with that."

"I don't need luck. I'll have you on my side."

She started fiddling with his bonds as she said this, only for Zoro to flinch.

"Hey! I didn't agree to anything!" he resisted. "-and you aren't actually helping me. I thought you knew that!"

Now it was her turn to look at Zoro like he was an idiot. "You honestly think these guys mean to keep their word? They're sadists, pure and simple."

"You can't prove they wouldn't."

"I'm sorry, but you're the one with the stupid idea, here. The burden of proof is on you, Zoro. Make me believe it is safe to leave you here alone."

"Helmeppo could have killed me and your little friends earlier. He didn't."

"That doesn't mean Captain Morgan would have been so merciful. Isn't it his authority that holds you?"

That caught Zoro's attention, but clearly didn't sway him. "I'll still hold up my part of the bargain. My word is my honor."

Luffy gave an exasperated sigh. "At least let me loosen the cords."

"No." he answered resolutely.

"You're a masochist." his would-be rescuer accused. This wasn't something he could refute, given the circumstances (though it was, in fact, incorrect).

"You should leave," Zoro said, exasperated beyond measure. "I'm sure your friends and family would like to know you yet live. That boy who came with you, in particular."

"Coby will be fine." Luffy hummed. "That kid is stronger than you know."

She paced around Zoro's crucifix as the swordsman processed her throwaway sentence. "Come away with me. We'll take this place down and head to the sea. It could be over by morning!"

"Even if I wanted to go with you, that blonde idiot took my swords."

"So you're open to the idea, after all?" Luffy asked, giddy anticipation on her face. "I just have to get your swords!"

"That's NOT what I said." He sighed. "Look, just... let me be. I just have those three days left and I can walk out of here."

"Nooope." Luffy said, stroking her chin and then stopping short as a brilliant idea hit her. She smacked her fist into her palm. "Oh, I know! I'll make a bet with you!"

Zoro lifted one dark eyebrow under his haramaki. "What are you going on about now?"

"I bet these guys will execute you in the next few days. If they do, I'll kick their asses and you'll have to join my crew!"

"I'll be dead." Zoro pointed out incredulously.

"No, you won't." she sang the words in the universal minor chord heard in schoolyards the whole world over. Her voice fell flat with the next utterance, however. "But if they don't gun for you, what do I owe?"

In accordance with the respect for his personal space thus far, Luffy leaned in uncomfortably close. Again seeing things he thought he shouldn't, Zoro's face began to burn. It was distracting.

He didn't hesitate for long. "You leave me be."

If his companion were insulted by this, she certainly didn't show it.

"Okay, Zoro. Let's shake on it!" She reached for the bindings again, only to back off when the man in question made an animalistic sound of warning.

"Fine, fine." She relented, waving her hands in front of her in a motion of placation. "So, er… Did you see where Coby went?"

The captive man made a choking sound of incredulity.

"Guess I have to find him on my own, then." She slipped her straw hat from her shoulders to the top of her head and looked at the fence that had granted her entrance. Roronoa Zoro was left gaping in her wake whilst she clambered over it like a monkey, the innkeeper's daughter's basket held between her teeth.

There was no way in hell that was the end of this.


	4. We Must Take Responsibility

A/N:Trucking on, here! Thanks for the feedback thus far. Also, if you're the sort of person who'd like to beta this, I'd appreciate it if you'd drop me a line.

* * *

Luffy could only assume there was a military curfew in place on the island. The lack of pedestrian traffic wasn't too far out of the ordinary in a small town, but Shells Town wasn't exactly a small settlement. It was a trade hub, and there should have been people coming and going next to street lanterns until the wee hours (when the taverns closed).

Instead of a bustling night life, there were only the echoes of scavenging animals and night birds bouncing on empty streets.

While usually happy to ignore the cold night air, Luffy could feel a chill wind nipping at her torso through bullet holes. Her experience as an urchin trained her to look for new clothing in the most expedient way possible. In this case, she trained her eyes on the clotheslines that marked civilization the world over.

She used her rubber limbs to pull herself over a short fence and into a yard where an assortment of garments dangled unguarded. She helped herself to a shaggy brown sweater interspersed with messy knitting and a misshapen hood. If nothing else, it would hide her form from any roving marine sentries (however absent they may be).

With aplomb, she resumed her search of Coby, occasionally startled by dogs barking. With the knowledge available to her, she assumed he would either be at an inn or a bunkhouse. Though he lacked money, most places would let you stay in the common room in exchange for manual labor. It was a hospitality custom that stretched back centuries in East Blue as a courtesy to shipwrecked sailors, but her little friend would certainly be in need of it now. The boy had naively left her with their coin purse.

After an hour, she spied the only lit streetlamp in all of town. Near it was the telltale wooden sign that indicated an open inn. She ducked against the outer wall and stealthily made her to the closed saloon doors.

Her entrance was relatively low-key for what her personal history had assigned to normality. Her guess as to Coby's location had been absolutely on the money: He was hunched over a table in front of a dim bar attended to by a woman who looked more like Luffy's childhood caretaker Makino than she had any right to.

He was currently completing the dissonant action of staring into space while at the same time letting the object in his eyeline burn its image into his corneas. It was dark, so she couldn't make out the bags under his eyes or any redness behind his damaged glasses lenses, but she assumed those details were there. She hadn't meant to scare him like that… Well, for more than the couple of seconds that people addicted to shock value tended to. The intention to hurt certainly wasn't present.

The innkeeper, who had no reason to recognize Luffy, was more than willing to sell her a couple of ciders, though she did narrow her eyes at what was probably an infamous local sweater.

"How is Avery these days?" she asked casually as she provided the beverages.

"No idea." Luffy said, thinking very little of the probing for an explanation for her stolen good. "I took this without asking."

The barkeep sputtered and moved to take the drinks away.

"Eh? Can we do this later?" Luffy motioned to Coby. "I kinda have something more important to do right now."

"We don't serve thieves here," came the innkeeper's reply.

"But I bet you'd serve a murderer." Luffy retorted, leaving double the amount of coin needed for the beverage as the woman blanched, clearly intimidated.

Coby continued his staring in the near-catatonia of someone who watched their hopes die, barely even moving as a steaming mug was laid down in front of him. Luffy sidled near him and took off her straw hat to place it on his head with a sympathetic hum.

"Sorry for the delay." she hummed, placing her face directly onto its side on the table's surface. "I had some ...things..."

Coby coughed, recognizing the familiar scents, sights, and sounds of the only friend he'd had in years.

"Luffy?" He asked hoarsely, rubbing his face and righting his posture to look at her concerned face.

"Yeah." She confirmed.

He let out a burst of shaky, uncertain laughter, but said nothing as clarity returned to his eyes.

"I thought it best not to poke the bear." She explained. "The bear being the marines… and poking them being, you know, not dying when they ordered me to."

His face screwed up in contemplation as he grabbed a dirty fork so hard his hand shook.

"So you're telling me that _you,_ Monkey D. Luffy, made a decision based on logic."

"Yes?" She sat up, feeling a dark aura emanating from her companion.

"-and in order to do it, you had to let me see you get brutally murdered by my heroes."

"When you say it like that, I sound like quite an asshole!" She laughed.

He stood up and knocked over his chair with the effort. "That's because you ARE!"

It would be a lie to say Luffy was caught off-guard by his wild haymaker (and not a small one, at that). She actually let out a small chortle as the chair tipped back with the force.

"Feel better now?" she asked from the floor, looking up at the ceiling with amusement.

"Immeasurably." Coby replied, the anger melting away from his face in front of a gathering group of spectators. He bent over to help Luffy back up and started to laugh despite himself. "I can't believe you, Luffy."

"I get that a lot." She conceded, grinning like an idiot.

"I'll bet."

Coby waved to the innkeeper, who had approached in concern during the ruckus. "It's okay, Ms. Leah! This is the friend I was talking about!"

Ms. Leah frowned. "You only talked about the one the marines gunned down."

Luffy had the decency to put an arm behind her head and at least look ashamed.

"Would you believe it if I said they missed?"

"No." Ms. Leah and Coby responded in unison.

"Ah. Well, I'm a rubber human, so I'm bulletproof."

"I don't believe that either." Ms. Leah deadpanned, only to have Coby interject with a,"That one's true, though."

Luffy pulled the side of her face and stretched it obscenely, allowing all of their spectators to see the flesh of her gums and cheek. She then let it snap back into position, making a sound not unlike a bullet. The customers of the inn gaped.

Small footsteps began to run down stairs at the sound. Luffy waved at the little girl from earlier but Ms. Leah stepped between them.

"You claimed to be a murderer?" she asked, her voice shaky. The other patrons mirrored her fear. "I.. I can call the marines!"

Luffy grinned and sat back down on her chair. "Oh, no. I accused you of serving murderers." She leaned forwards, brown eyes intense. "The marines. I was talking about the marines under Captain Morgan. Or am I wrong?"

The people in the bar showed a gamut of reactions, all of which only affirmed what Luffy had already suspected. Coby looked upwards suddenly, recalling one of the things that had been bothering him before their ridiculously nonchalant reunion. "They're going to kill him."

"Zoro?" She asked, though probably unnecessarily. It took work not to look pleased with herself (especially when the room carried an energy that could only be described as 'pre-riotous').

Coby nodded. "A patrolman came by with the announcement. It's going to happen tomorrow at noon."

"YOU CAN'T LET THEM!" Screamed the little girl on the stairwell. Ms. Leah's mouth hung open in a pre-protest. Those two had probably had this conversation already. In fact, Luffy thought it safe to assume that everyone there had already mulled over this idea and thought the best of it.

The base contained hundreds of marines with guns. Historically, unarmed civilians did not fare well against such odds.

"Rika, sweetheart, we can't just-," Ms. Leah began.

"I'LL GO MYSELF!" Said little girl stood her ground and merely shrieked this, eyes squeezed shut. "I'll go myself and I'll beat them up!"

"Shishishi!" Luffy laughed uproariously. "She's brave! You must be very proud."

The word 'proud' should have been replaced with the word 'horrified', but Luffy was relatively certain that those two sentiments could exist side-by-side.

"Coby, I think my work is cut out for me. You coming along in the morning?"

The boy threw up his hands in surrender. "I can't stand to see the marines acting so shamefully. You know I have no choice here."

"Yes!" Luffy pumped her fist into the air. "Anyone else up to a revolution?!"

There were a few murmurs, but ultimately no one came forward. Oh, well. Luffy didn't really expect anything else.

* * *

Zoro hated being wrong. He especially hated being wrong when it meant he was going to have to pledge his allegiance to what he could only identify as a mysterious, insane, ambitious, and very poorly-dressed young woman. She was truly the offspring of the devil.

That being said, he loved the fact that he could look at the towering hulk known as Captain Morgan and his entourage without actually being afraid that he would die. He also appreciated that Helmeppo had tried to talk his father down in front of everyone under the midday-sun, presumably still consumed by guilt about a non-murder.

Captain Morgan wouldn't have it. He'd already made up his mind to kill a dissenter, and he'd be damned if a child he never loved would stop him.

The firing squad consisted of 20 soldiers. Knowing Roronoa Zoro's reputation meant he wouldn't take any chances. The swordsman had no doubt that, counter to regulation, every single rifle would be loaded.

There was the sound of something elastic snapping and the same object soaring through the air that came right before the order to fire. Again, Zoro was shielded by a waif. This time the bullets pushed through the air behind her, dragging her skin into obscene lines that snapped the ammunition back into the air.

She remained standing and even laughed at the stunned marines in front of her. Helmeppo fainted right away.

"So, which one of you guys is Captain Morgan?" she asked, beaming brightly from where she stood in a mangled sweater.

No one answered, so she just went after the enormous likely candidate with a punch like a pistol. To be fair, not everyone had a literal target on their face like her chosen enemy. He had a metal jaw that shimmered in the midday sun, and Zoro loved the sound it made when it was mangled in a single blow.

He didn't have long to meditate on this before he felt someone assertively pulling at the knots keeping him stuck to his wooden cross. Luffy's little friend wasn't doing a very good job of setting him free, but the bounty hunter knew an honest effort when he saw one.

"You're going to need a blade, kid." Zoro muttered.

"Got it. I think I'm going to have to wait for Luffy to incapacitate some soldiers before I get a saber, though."

As if in an answer to both of their prayers, Luffy's manic laughter broke through the air, accompanied by panicked soldiers' screams.

"I think," Coby said, pushing his glasses frames up the bridge of his nose. "-that's my cue."

He ran over to a group of incapacitated soldiers and took one of their standard-issue cutlasses. He returned with it and sawed the bindings off. Zoro immediately fell to his knees and tested the bounds of his new freedom to the rhythm of Luffy's wanton (but ultimately nonlethal) violence.

Zoro's eyes eventually fell on her as he stumbled to his feet. She had danced her way around the battlefield stunning her opponents when possible. Some of the marines weren't even trying to engage her after seeing what she could do. They certainly weren't trying very hard to protect their commanding officer, whom Luffy was strafing like an angry starling with her punches and kicks.

The bounty hunter suspected she was toying with him. He could only guess as to why, but his primary theory involved humiliating him to show his underlings he didn't deserve to command their fear. If that was her plan, it was shaping up nicely.

She broke away from the fight to make eye contact with Zoro. She gave him a knowing glance that was more confusing to him than anything else. Then, she merely stood there with her back to the enemy in what he hoped was merely a game of chicken with the ax.

Moments passed and he began to realize she wasn't playing chicken with the ax. so much as with _him (_ assuming she wasn't actually immortal; he needed to ask about that). She was allowing an infuriated man with an enormous weapon in his arm to charge at her exposed back so that he would move his ass and _cover_ it.

He'd made a deal, and while she hadn't yet completed her end of the bargain, she was close.

He grabbed the sword from Coby's hand and deflected a would-be killing blow despite his exhaustion.

Luffy clapped twice. "Nice, Zoro!"

"No problem," he deadpanned, only to have his eyes widen as her arm elongated to strike a finishing blow. He was beginning to put together her powers from watching her fight (combined with her nigh-invulnerability where bullets were concerned), but it was still unnerving to watch the limb extend from the sleeve of her ugly sweater like an obscene fleshy stem.

Captain Morgan fell forward, and the remaining marines threw their weapons up into the air with the hoots of liberated men. Coby joined their happy shouting, but remained close to Zoro's cross. This wasn't truly his party.

As unpredictable as she had seemed to be, Zoro didn't bat an eye when Luffy hummed happily and shot herself through a window on the third story of the base. He assumed she was fulfilling the rest of their pact and turned out not to be wrong.

She returned with what he could only assume was every sword she could find, and happened to have his three blades in the pile. He stroked them lovingly and ignored and sounds the people around him made in response. How he felt about his katana was his own business. They could take their petty blade-related prejudices elsewhere.

Finally reunited with his lovelies, Zoro let himself relax and his body's fatigue caught up to him. He collapsed to his knees, which apparently alarmed his new… captain, was it? She pursed her lips into a frown and picked him up like he weighed as much as a toddler. Though he had lost some body mass, Zoro still knew to be impressed.

He dozed off in that position, content that he was in capable hands.


	5. We Must Move On

A/N: As always, I don't own the media this fanfiction is based on. Thanks for all the faves and follows, my friends.

* * *

Zoro awoke in a warm bed he recognized from his first days in Shells Town. If it weren't for the crippling muscle weakness and harsh feeling of emptiness coursing through his entire person, he would have thought the majority of this last month had been a dream. As it was however, such denial was not an option at all.

"Oh, Zoro!" came a now-familiar voice. It ('she', he had to correct himself) sounded pleased. He looked at the form bouncing over him. Gone now was the terribly sweater of before: Luffy had instead taken to wearing the too-large red vest from their first meeting, the holes stitched with bright yellow threads and the skills of a child. "You're awake!"

"I guess so." He responded, his mind and voice both groggy. "Hope you haven't been waiting too long, Captain."

Ah. That elicited positive attention. She approached him and tousled his hair affectionately. If it had been anyone other person he'd known so briefly touching his head, he probably would have been very extremely uncomfortable. In contrast, this somehow felt right.

"Not long. Just a couple days."

Zoro felt for the IVs someone had placed in him and ripped them out instinctively before sitting up. He could handle taking whatever those tubes had for him orally, thank you.

He swore he felt a wave of disapproval flooding towards him, but when he looked back up at his apparent nurse-maid, she was humming and helping herself to some large wads of bread from her cargo shorts.

He eyed them hungrily, but she pitilessly devoured the first one in a single bite, distending her mouth and engulfing the grains as if she were a reptile, and the chunk of bread were a paralyzed mouse.

"It's a shame," she said after swallowing noisily. "-that you weren't awake earlier. You missed out on the victory feast."

He wasn't listening very closely. He merely continued to stare at the morsels, only for her to laugh and toss them at his face, testing his tragically-unused reflexes. He caught them and glared at Luffy briefly.

"The doctor said not to let you eat anything but gruel for the next few days, but he didn't say anything about pelting you with bread."

He mulled that over for all of three seconds before wolfing down the food provided for him. He could understand where the doctor was coming from, but as someone who had more in common with a camel than a human due to his lifestyle, he planned to disregard the physician's advice with prejudice.

A familiar gourd found its way into his hand, which was just as well as he had eaten to fast and needed to chase the bread down.

He looked around for any other consumables in the room, but found none aside from Luffy (who was only the closest thing to being consumable rather than actual food). Not one for cannibalism, he brushed crumbs off of his stubbled chin and emerged from the coverlets, letting his feet hit solid ground.

Odd. He didn't remember it being so cold.

Luffy smiled again, then patted folded clothes on a chair. His swords leaned against the back of it, newly-polished.

"We're going to leave today, I think. Best get dressed, Zoro."

Only then did Zoro realize what he was missing. Surprisingly, he didn't feel any more shame than she did at his lack of modesty. He didn't know if that was because he hardly considered her a true "woman"(whatever that meant), or if it was because her nonchalance had rubbed off on him.

* * *

Luffy waited patiently, reporting the change in Zoro's state to anyone who would listen. She began to purchase and haul supplies into the green dingy she'd shared with Coby. Said boy helped her move crates of nonperishable food items and fishing equipment with a thoughtful expression. It probably was intriguing to watch them complete these errands, as Luffy carried well over four times what Coby did. Sometimes she disappeared in her cargo.

"Do you have to go already?" Coby asked after the third trip, sitting down with his legs dangling off the dock.

"Pirate Kings don't make themselves, Coby."

He sighed and bit his lower lip. "I.. I don't think they're going to let me be a marine here, Luffy. Everyone knows I'm with you. Maybe I could just… I don't know, settle down? Get an apprenticeship and learn to fish?"

Luffy picked up on the hopelessness in his words right away and stood up rigidly. She looked at her little friend and narrowed her eyes. She knew to back up her pupils with proverbial steel.

She didn't revel in it, but Coby flinched and looked down.

She walked past him, doing her best to ignore that he was even there. What Coby proposed was a fate worse than death. Not that she didn't see this turn of events coming, mind you.

"H-hey, wait up!" Luffy heard Coby call as she hastened her walk up the street. She picked up her pace when she saw what she had been waiting for. A large group of marines were making their way into the inn. She was so close to dragging her little friend over that last horrifying line separating him from living a life without regrets that she could taste victory.

Victory tasted like sausage with a not-unpleasant secondary fruity flavor.

Ms. Leah was providing a third helping of breakfast to Zoro when Luffy burst in, Coby in tow.

The innkeeper looked up to the young woman with concern at the group of men who had taken to forming a semi-circle in the common room, with the commanding officer standing at attention in the middle conspicuously.

Zoro seemed content to ignore them, but the upcoming address concerned him, too.

"We at Marine base 9 must thank you for all you have done here, but we cannot continue to allow pirates free reign on this island. We must ask you three to leave immediately."

Luffy wondered if the squeaking sound behind her was the sound of Coby's jaw dropping or the breaking of his poor little heart (more likely, it was the audible sound of his disappointment). She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath.

"I'm only _barely_ a pirate. You know that, right? And Zoro hasn't done anything remotely piratey yet."

The officer looked at his underlings, perplexed. "But you've told other people in town that you were pirates, and you took down a marine captain. Those are buccaneering actions."

"More like revolutionary, but I get what you're saying." Luffy said, rubbing her nose on her arm in feigned disinterest. "Look here," she breathed, "-Zoro and I will be leaving shortly, but Coby here is a refugee."

Coby gulped, all eyes suddenly upon him.

"As of two weeks ago, he wanted to be a marine. Doubt that changed in the past few days, though you lot and Captain Morgan really gave murdering his dream a go."

She gave them a sarcastic thumbs-up. "He got to watch you threaten children and shoot civilians! GOOD ON YA!"

She could see the perspiration trickling down their faces. "You know what would go great with all the tyranny you guys enforced? ME TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT IT!"

She let her mouth remain open in a wide smile.

She heard Coby stepping up behind her. "I mean, peacekeeping'd be difficult, but it's not like you didn't earn it. I mean, you guys shot me for what was, at best, worth a week in low-security prison."

Zoro looked up at she started laughing like a maniac, her voice climbing in pitch. Maybe they were new friends, but there was no excuse for him not to catch on. There was a method to this madness. For that reason, she ignored the sounds of sabers being pulled out of belts. "It's a wonder these islands have lasted as long as they have! You guys SUCK at your jobs!"

Coby growled and tackled her from the side with all of his tiny, prepubescent fury. "YOU LAY OFF OF THEM, LUFFY! THEY TAKE THIS SHIT ALL THE TIME!"

She started and laughed more in the face of his sudden fury. "We. Cannot. Trust. Pirates. To. Police. Themselves." He punched with every syllable, causing an impressive blanch to come over the room. Zoro acted as the exception, understanding dawning on his features.

"Without the law, we are ALL going to die, Luffy! MARINES DO THE BEST THEY CAN!"

She let her face pop back into place and chuckled. "Guess you still want to be one!" she shouted, kicking him into the ceiling with minimal force. There was no splintering, but some dust fell out of the rafters along with poor, poor Coby. It really was for his own good, though.

The marines brandished their sabers in full sight at this point, having had enough of the ridicule and violence.

"We won't let you hurt another single hair on his head, Harpy!" One of the younger soldiers bellowed. His superior gave him a sharp look, then turned to Luffy.

"Get out of here, now. Clearly that boy isn't with you, but Roronoa and yourself need to leave immediately, or we will okay use of force to take you down."

Well, that was to be the story of her life. At least she had given Coby a fighting chance at his ambition.

As she was fully prepared for departure, Luffy tossed a couple of coins to Ms. Leah and beckoned to Zoro. When she left the inn's double doors, she didn't even look back.

The would-be captain and the former pirate hunter had a leisurely walk to the dingy, shrouded in a companionable sort of silence. The villagers didn't dare come out to see them off. Obviously some habits died hard, and fearing retribution of an overly powerful militant force was one of them.

"Hey, Zoro?" Luffy asked, looking at the sky as her feet moved forward.

"Hm?"

"Do you have any more bounties to take care of?"

Zoro gave his new captain a sidelong glance. "I guess. Why would that even be an issue?"

The waif laughed again, proving joviality to be her default temperament.

"I'm almost out of money and our boat sucks!"

Zoro flinched momentarily, but he quickly regained his equilibrium.

"I guess that's normal when you're starting out." he reasoned. Luffy nodded.

"Yeah. I mean, you're my first mate-," She shot him a winning look. "-in every sense of the term."

The two stopped in unison right before the turn that would lead them to the docks. Zoro just stared at her (dumbfounded, she assumed).

"You mean-," He pointed at her and then himself, blinking.

She nodded. "Yep. Just us."

He put two fingers to his head and let himself lapse into Luffy's most adaptive coping mechanisms (those being laughter and acceptance). Luffy immediately joined him, seemingly an infinite font of air and vibrations of mirthful sound.

"Fuck, that's funny."

"I know, right?! But we'll get by."

He just shook his head.

Once they were situated in Luffy's appropriated green monstrosity of a boat, the two set out for sea, only to hear Coby's barking behind them. Zoro and Luffy regarded in detached fascination as he bellowed a loud and heartfelt thanks in front of what appeared to be a score of marines. He saluted them, and the others followed suit.

Hmph. Maybe they did know how to say thank you after all. She gave them a brief wave, but didn't keep too much eye contact with the boy in the distance. The less of a bond she publicly presented with Coby, the better off he'd be (even if the cat was obviously out of the bag about their friendship now).

Zoro looked on with a cocky-half grin and then made knowing eye contact with Luffy.

They had a moment where they held an entire conversation in which they agreed that Coby was both a sweet kid and would probably be just fine. At least, that's what Luffy thought Zoro got out of that brief stare-down. She had no reason to doubt the wordless telepathy.

It felt good to be with Zoro(again?). It was like putting on a shoe that finally fit at the end of a brutal growth spurt. It was hard to miss someone she'd never met, but it had clearly been a constant until the moment they set out together once more.

* * *

If someone had told the Zoro of six months ago that he would be floating aimlessly on the beautiful ocean of East Blue with a scantily-clad woman sleeping in his chest staring at the night sky, he would have snorted derisively in their general direction. He had been off on a killing spree with Saga; those days seemed like they would never end. His skills had improved drastically on those small trips, but there hadn't been the same feeling of belonging that lingered now.

As a general rule, the man did not trust easily, but the little ball of spunk he cradled now just seemed to force purpose on him. He didn't just have to get stronger for his own sake anymore. He had this creature to look after. It helped that he didn't have to worry about her being some frail thing (he would not have even thought of acquiescing to her request of comradeship if that had been the case), but she was only a human, in the end. He knew too well the folly of assuming someone else was invincible.

Her sleeping face was peaceful. He hadn't really looked at her too closely before, but it wasn't an unattractive face. It still held some of childhood's handiwork, but there was a dreadful scar that made him want to wince just below the left eye.

Perhaps it was the dark hair that fell haphazardly over the side of her face that made him think of his childhood idol, Kuina. If she had lived, he estimated she would have been just a little older than his new friend.

Would she have looked like this? Would she have been here in Luffy's stead?

He sighed and gently swept a lock of hair away from his captain's face. There really was no use in wondering such things. It wasn't as if he could experience an alternate timeline where that was a reality. He wasn't one for such abstract ideas as a normal rule. Zoro was, in essence, a practical man, and he had to deal with the reality of now.

He had a new crew, however small it was, that felt fulfilling. Unlike those families of choice he'd gathered up to this point, he wouldn't allow this one to slip through his fingers.

Luffy repositioned herself on his chest. He could feel her heartbeat, a steady undulation of mesmerizing motion under smooth skin.

Zoro smiled. It might have been a poor decision, but he let himself drift off, rocked steadily by the rhythms of the sea and Luffy's liquid life pumping through her veins.

* * *

A/N: Retrieval of Zoro Ark is over! I don't know if I'll go into great detail about the end of Romance Dawn (I.E. Shanks). It will probably show up organically as things carry on, but it may not yet be time.


	6. We Tiny Broken Things

A/N: Sorry this took longer than usual. My employment got crazy.

* * *

Luffy stared intently at the ocean, as if it could be the answer to some great puzzle. She knew it wasn't, just as she knew that within a week's time, both Zoro and she had somehow managed to become helplessly lost. Judging by his reaction to this news, he felt it was a fact of life. Somehow, he had managed to adapt to being adrift so successfully that it was a constant expectation.

The young woman had that in common with her new first mate, it seemed, but she didn't share his unwavering confidence that they would find their way to their next location without aid. Rather, she kept their supply level ever in the back of her mind. There was no way to avoid this eventuality with her eating habits being what they were.

It wasn't really something she did out of spite, but she suspected her metabolism was at least five times as fast as an average human. She couldn't remember a time when she didn't feel a constant, unabiding hunger that pushed her towards what others could only describe as terrifying gluttony. There was no satisfaction until everything was distended and her proportions were ridiculously inhuman. Even then, the relief lasted only a few hours, and no amount of meat would remain on her slim form.

During her youth, she had sometimes become so desperate that she would shove random plants, wood, and even mud into her gullet to stop the burning. All things considered, she was lucky to not be desperately ill.

It had taken years, but she became accustomed to going without. She'd eat only enough to prevent her from thinking of inorganic material and clearly-sentient beings around her as food. Even this was sufficiently distressing to most who would watch her fill her cavernous maw. She stopped caring overmuch about what other people thought of her eaten habits (except to the degree that she enjoyed watching them squirm), but she still had moments where she wished she were under less scrutiny. Her attempt to stretch out the small boat's food stores by catching and eating raw fish with her bare hands qualified as one of these instances that was slightly out of her comfort zone (though in her opinion, she hid her self-consciousness admirably).

Reactions varied to devouring raw meat, but Zoro, mercifully, seemed to be accustomed to this behavior, just as her brothers were. He even emulated it to the point that he grunted in approval with every catch and made moves to prepare the beasts himself. She was happy enough to allow this, as Luffy seldom fared well bladed objects and didn't always do a good job of sanitizing her meals when the task fell to her clumsy hands.

She typically made short work of the majority of their raw nourishment, though she let Zoro take more if he asked (though using the term _'ask'_ was not entirely appropriate in this context, as the two pirates communicated about the shares with silent movements, breathing patterns, and tugging contests).

He would stare only at the beginning and the end of the horrific ritual that was her mealtime, and would often give an amused smirk as opposed to the gaping frown his captain had come to expect from nearly everyone else.

It would not be a stretch to say that Luffy had bonded with the swordsman further through their wanderings. Providing for mealtime was not the only source of difficulty in their lives: even the relatively calm ocean they currently traversed had its storms, and they happened with only a couple hours of warning.

Usually, the travelers only had to worry about getting soaked. With a typical lack of decorum, the two managed to deal with that by curling into one another under a single tarp after securing what cargo they possessed. However, there had been two instances of waves that threatened to take what little they had.

The first time, the two had managed to keep their supplies and ability to stay above the water by the skin of their teeth, bracing for each wave and hoping fortune would be kind. As was often the case, they hadn't needed dialogue to coordinate their movements or prepare. Each of them behaved as an extra limb of the other. They looped around the vessel, bailed water, and towards the end, held onto their miniscule mast while tying a safety line in the midst of extreme danger.

When the storm finally passed, they laid down upon the deck and just laughed for thirty seconds straight.

The second storm cost them. Lubricated with rain, one of their containers of precious freshwater fell into the deep. Luffy wasn't a meteorologist. She had no way of predicting rains, though she was certain they would always come. She simply couldn't be sure that they would be often and sufficient to keep the two sailors alive. It was this desperation that nearly drove her into the sea after it.

She stretched too far and lost her balance during a particularly strong-armed thrust on the part of the sea. Only Zoro's reflexes kept her above the drink.

She smiled up at him, her default response uneffected by the situation at hand. She would wager he could feel it, even after so short a time. She had been told that her smiles could have the force of a punch. However, she'd have to wait to ask about that hypothesis, as Zoro was gripping onto the mast for dear life until the current wave finally abated.

That had been the night before. Zoro snored from behind her, taking a well-deserved nap (though it resembled a coma more than regular slumber). She wouldn't bother him with their current problem. He either wasn't concerned about the lack of water or somehow trusted in her to somehow supernaturally come up with a solution to it.

She _would_ , of course, but that had no bearings on Zoro's belief that she could do so. He had no way of knowing she could use any sort of otherworldly ability that did involve stretching or inflating, so why that was, she wasn't sure.

She hoped that in her absence the man was a more proactive individual. He seemed put-together during those afternoons wherein he spent tedious hours providing wanted posters and drilling her on the names of the villains depicted upon them. She'd take that description a step further and say he was also mature in that he pardoned the fact that all of the pirate's names began to blur together.

As time wore on, she somehow managed to do an even worse job of putting the monikers to the people they represented. She remembered the most important thing, however. She remembered they existed. She even recognized some of them from her former (stolen) life. Unfortunately, she couldn't glean more than that.

She hadn't been able to gauge the state of the moon during the tempest. She had utilized her ability only once, she believed, during the last lunar cycle, but she wanted to be careful to mark the start of the next one. The new moon had to be close; if it had happened last night, she had regained her alotment of multiplicity. If it hadn't, then this would be the last time she could use her fickle power safely for the following few days, and a great deal could happen in that time.

All the same, she didn't have much choice. Their spare rain barrel already took in seawater. They wouldn't have long before thirst set in. She had to find out how her other iterations managed to survive the coming days. They _had_ to have found land again, but that was hard to fathom as she found nothing but endless horizon in every direction.

She had experienced a sister situation to this before, but she'd be damned if she remembered exactly how it had been dealt with.

She extended her hands out and closed her eyes, immediately skimming over thousands of other selves.

Not all of them were in their location, which was jarring to experience, but not at all unexpected. Though no time passed without, within the experience, it took what felt like hours to settle into a close simulacrum.

Again, she joined a male counterpart, and as one they worried about a lack of supplies and impending doom. She (he) didn't spend much energy on it, however. Instead, they opted to join Zoro in napping and only awoke long enough to take a quick meal and relief before returning to blissful sleep. It was only at the sun's zenith the next day that he awoke, only to find they'd been visitted in the night by an enormous seabird that had taken to breaking into a barrel of apples.

The current Luffy woke Zoro and decided to catch the thing as a meal in comeuppance. This Zoro merely snorted as the thing took to the air, wiping a little drool away. He inquired about _how_ his captain would accomplish this.

It ended… badly. He(she) decided to take it down by force, shooting himself directly at the winged thief. She revelled in her current skin's recklessness. They experienced an incredible surge of adrenaline that quickly turned to fear as the beast clamped a beak around their neck.

Alternate Zoro swore and shrieked at them, forcing meta-Luffy to cry out for help. It hurt. Luffy felt the rigid form of their bonds keenly. It was both of their form, and as always, she experienced the sensations therein keenly. Still, she had to follow through for at least a day to find an answer she sought. That, or death.

Oddly, Luffy had always been able to detach before she died in another form completely. She had never truly been suicidal; the thought of actually hitting the ground in the proverbial nightmare never appealed to her. Some times, she feared that it would come and she would experience her own mortality irrevocably in another form. Other times, she wondered if her own life's ending would freeze her own reality in the hell that was the moment of her trance's beginning, or if she would simply cease to be a part of it.

This was to be one of those times. She held onto the bird's neck along with her host with all of their combined strength. Only after hours elapsed was there to be relief. It came in the form of a screaming projectile.

If she were to judge by the shockwave, she would wager it was a high explosive of some sort. It ended how she needed it to, however.

Her feet hit solid ground.

But where was alternate Zoro? He wasn't right behind them. Only a bunch of shocked thugs were, and they certainly weren't worth the time this Luffy had to spend to get his hat adjusted.

Then, she heard a voice, and recollection began to turn the She-Luffy's cognitive gears. Nami. Nami would meet them here!

She hijacked her counterpart and beamed at the red-headed woman.

They met within an abandoned house and spoke of the abomination that was Buggy's reign of terror.

Luffy remembered. Everything that would follow in the next two days according to that first potent life slid into place as if it were a fixture that had always existed in her mind.

She severed the connection and grimaced. It hadn't been a whole lunar cycle yet. The bloody nose that had started indicated this, but she wasn't too concerned. The whole thing should reset the coming night, if nothing else. Now, she just had to bide her time.

She had been gifted with the foresight to come up with the beginnings of a plan, and she didn't dare waste the opportunity. Still, as always, she gambled with life. This truth wasn't something she could dwell on anymore than she could the absurdity of her story.

Zoro slept on, blissfully unaware of the lengthly adventure that had occurred less than a meter away. She sat down and stared at the sky. Her counterpart was content to wait, but she didn't want any variation in their story to take away the chance to find dry land before the captain and first mate dried out in the most literal of senses.

It wasn't far-fetched to assume timelines varied. She had witnessed this many times, though some events were more likely to happen asynchronously than others. Most of the differences between universes were superficial or delays of up to 24 hours, though time was easy to lose track of in the transcendental haze. Some, however, were far more drastic.

She remembered entering selves of varying circumstances. For example, she'd merged with a marine version of herself and one surrounded by nothing but darkness and shrieking monsters. She'd been elderly, captive, and in the middle of bearing a child. She didn't hold onto these experiences with a great deal of effort, but she had to acknowledge that any difference _could_ exist. Destiny and existence were hard enough to prove, let alone predict.

The precaution of staying awake paid off, though only by a matter of a hours. The avian poacher from her other life showed up that very evening, alighting on the tip of their vessel and cawing. She stared at it and cocked her head, her hunger in check as it approached and took from their stores.

She allowed it a meal, not daring to move an inch. It spent a torturous span of time on the deck, digesting and preening. It even had the audacity in all of its creature glory to take a nap. Again, she waited.

When it took to the air at last, she grabbed the oars and followed it. It was very fast, but she still had years of physical training and wilderness survival under her belt. She wouldn't be outwitted by an oversized seabird. A mutant seagull gifted with the ability to break the sound barrier, maybe, but not _this_ bird nor _this_ day.

Night had fallen by the time it led her to land. Exhausted but as happy as it was possible to be given the circumstances (moderately), Luffy nudged Zoro into wakefullness and pointed to the dark mass she knew to be an island. His eyes widened only for the briefest of seconds before lapsing into something she hoped was pride.

Two sets of hands pushed their little boat with more efficiency than simply her own. They would be there soon, and Luffy would soon fulfill a common childhood fantasy wasted upon her duplicate destiny; the punching of a clown.


	7. We Must Remember Details

A/N: Sorry, that took a while. Life still hits like a steamroller. Back to our regularly scheduled steamrolling.

* * *

Their nocturnal approach brought them closer than Luffy would have liked to a pirate ship. Their hoisted colors brought up the image of their captain. She remembered he was a clown creature with devil fruit powers like herself, and that he was more involved with her shared past/future than she'd like to admit. His name, though, was a morphing mass in her mind despite all of the small crew's efforts to prevent this eventuality.

Perhaps it was some great test about her perception of mankind. More than likely, however, her subconscious didn't care a whit about the damned pirate and didn't bother with what her conscious mind thought about it. In what was essentially an act of intentional defiance in a mind that was regularly bent obscenely out of shape with impossible duplicity of self, her brain decided thenames of her foes were classified information. Luffy was not granted the necessary clearance to access it.

Unaware of the strange mental machinations of his captain, Zoro narrowed his eyes at the vessel and clearly put words to what she couldn't.

"Buggy the Clown. Poor idiots don't know what they're in for."

He motioned for them to moor away from the main docks. They chose a small inlet next to a couple of poorly-kept shacks built into a cliffside nestled into the side of a grassy hill.

Theirs was not the only boat here, either, but small unmarked rowboats did not carry the same threat as an armed man-of-war.

Their footsteps were uncharacteristically quiet when they padded onto the slippery rocks that would lead them up to shelter. The path from the shore was steep and somewhat difficult to traverse, but not impassible. The shacks they led to had to be built above the level of the tides, so it was a given that they would be hard to get to compared to the dwellings on the sheltered side of the island (which the pirates likely controlled).

When the two reached the first dwelling, they saw flecks of lamplight through ratty translucent curtains. Luffy gave Zoro a quick glance and rapped her knuckles on the warped front door. She heard the sounds of gasping and panicked murmurs. Furniture shifted and when the handle finally turned, the two pirates laid eyes on the business end of a pitchfork rather than a human face.

"You aren't with Buggy's crew, are you?" came a man's shaking voice. "-because we won't go down with a fight! We won't let you take what little we have left!"

Luffy put her bare hands out in front of her, expression stuck in passive interest. Zoro kept a relaxed hand over the hilt of the katana with which Luffy suspected was his romantic interest, but otherwise betrayed no sign of agitation.

"Nope." she announced loudly after an uncomfortably drawn-out moment. "Hey, Zoro. Bucky's that clown guy, right?"

"It's Buggy, and yes." He confirmed, his tone apathetic.

"Cool. I'm going to kick his ass."

There were sounds of shock and alarm from inside the shack. Perhaps the residents therein were mulling over how to deal with their new guests. Even if they weren't pirates, Luffy had a sense of how insane they sounded. Even Zoro looked mildly uncomfortable after her last admission.

Luck was on her side, though, as the pitchfork acting as a substitute for a human head withdrew into the abode and was soon replaced by the face of its wielder.

It belonged to an unshaven man on the verge of middle age.

"You said Zoro? Is that…?"

Luffy yanked her first mate into view. He allowed this to happen but still managed to emulate an irritated hermit crab through his posture.

"Yep! He's the famous bounty hunter who hunts pirates!" she practically sang, her eyes shining with fanatical zeal. The man at the door immediately relaxed. This was likely due to the similarities of the young swordsman with his rumored description rather than Luffy's endorsement, but it was a help nonetheless.

* * *

It wasn't long before the two were standing in front of a group of displaced townspeople before a damp, empty hearth. This was one of several of their temporary homes, and while the fifteen people that had taken to the shack were far from the most influential in terms of governance, Luffy basked in the social interaction whilst the townies spoke at length of their troubles. As there were many, this took several hours, during which the duo of a pirate crew partook in a scant bounty of crab meat and some form of mystery meat that Luffy suspected was rat.

She had to squash her desire to eat the meals of everyone else present, feeling her mouth water even after devouring the peasant's share she was graciously given. Perhaps she could have done a better job, because she felt a sudden, stealthy pull on her unattended right arm at one point. Her swordsman had pinned it down in a gesture that someone may have misconstrued as romantic if they didn't feel its crushing force.

She gathered that it had started to stretch towards someone else's meal and nodded her thanks.

Zoro didn't let go immediately, which Luffy thought was a bit odd. It wasn't a graceful hold, to be sure. His hand was like a vise pinned down by cinderblocks. Ah. Her arm was still distorted until everything was realigned. He was hiding her power from the others. Well, that only accounted for the first ten seconds, after that, the young pirate just shook her head and decided it was best not to think about it.

That would have been easier if his hand wasn't so uncomfortable against her skin. It felt superheated and electrified. Still, as there was no pain she eventually managed to forget it was there. As a result, she was caught off guard by the shock of cold that replaced it when he let go.

Once the meal was over, Luffy took to grinning wildly and telling great (and increasingly tall) tales of her swordsman's prowess. It had started inocuously enough; the primary stories were common rumors and often true. The others, however….

If he were uncomfortable, Zoro knew better than to broadcast it.

"-and that's when he ate the still-beating heart of the shark to gain its power!"

That had escalated quickly. Did sharks even have hearts in the conventional sense? He wasn't a marine biologist.

There was a collective gasp of amazement and, yes, horror, that followed that statement. Perhaps the young woman had gone too far in her weaving of tales. She lacked a bard's sense of dramatic pacing and replaced it with the same blunt force that she somehow shoved into every aspect of her persona.

As if sensing telepathic literary criticism, Luffy's warm brown eyes met his and she quickly changed the subject.

"So you can imagine how much I want to kick an equal amount of ass as his pirate captain." she chuckled. "So I just need to know where to find Captain Bukey, right?"

"Buggy." Zoro corrected her calmly, betraying nothing of his annoyance with her already having forgotten the mark's name.

"Buggy, right, so I can (like I said before) kick his ass."

There was a silence that had blanketed the room and then seeped into every crevasse like beach sand that could never be removed. Luffy had, after all, announced her alleged piracy and captainship over a vicious manhunter very casually. The words had seemed so ridiculous that they had to belong to a fool rather than a montebank.

Zoro suspected she had counted on this. Fools gathered more goodwill than scoundrels, and the people of East Blue had long-since thought it insane to trust those who promised them deliverance. The marines may have tried to keep the peace, but every village lived one pirate invasion away from destruction. It was often solidarity alone that saved them.

It took a long time before anyone said anything, and when the words came, they wafted out of a child's mouth.

"They took the old bar, lady. You know, the building on the tallest terrace."

She did know, but Luffy still treated this information as if it were new and profound. She stroked her chin in thought… unconvincingly. Her first mate knew exactly what would happen in the next few seconds, and he did not approve.

"Okay. Let's go!"

Zoro bit his tongue and followed her to the door, watching a slow deterioration that had started towards the end of dinner that apparently only he was privy to. Everyone else in the room was too busy with their shocked gaping.

Luffy swayed a little when she fiddled with the handle, but she could handle worse than this and continue fighting the cruelest of opponents. Or, at least, she will have.

They were back on the slick path sloping upwards in less than a minute. Zoro was her faithful shadow as she forced quiet enthusiasm. It wasn't until they reached the top of the hill that overlooked a couple of acres of forest, the bonfires of Buggy's crew illuminating the sky, that he finally said anything.

"You've barely slept, Luffy."

This wasn't entirely true. Much of the current fatigue that had finally caught up to her stemmed from the second use of her multiplicity combined with a lack of a proper meal. This was confidential information, however, and Zoro was no high-ranking espionage agent.

Luffy scratched the back of her head, nudging her hat upwards with the arm motion. "You noticed, huh?"

"I'm no doctor, but I can tell when an opponent is in no shape to fight." he responded, raising the hand he had used to more-or-less crush her earlier. "And you're just a walking gift basket for the enemy right now."

"Zoro… did you just use a metaphor?" Luffy asked her friend, interrupting any buildup of dramatic tension.

"…,"

He responded by regarding her impassively. She took advantage of his silence and pressed on a couple more steps, surveying the incline that would bring them to the dark old-growth forest below. There wasn't much of a footpath, really. If she didn't want to use her rubber powers to expedite the process, it could take a long time to get down safely.

Her vision blurred.

"Captain," she heard her first-mate's voice intone with a warning note. She let her unfocused gaze wander back to him.

"We just have to get into the forest tonight, Zoro. I'm not an idiot." Luffy assured him, before letting out a juvenile, whining yawn. "I wanna sleep in a tree."

"Hm." her companion replied, his hum atonal and apathetic about the idea. "Didn't want to sleep with the others?"

"Nope. I don't know them and they're all packed up like sardines; stranger-sardines in a can." she yawned. "I'd rather… y' know, the trees."

She repeated, pointing to the forest whilst her posture deflated.

"Twist my arm, why don't you?" he asked, a smirk evident in his tone.

He picked her up like a bag of limp potatoes that happened to fall into a human shape and lugged her down the hill over his shoulders. Despite the constant feeling of urgency that fueled much of Luffy's actions where her nakama were concerned, the sensation of being carried by someone she adored was a welcome creature comfort. She rubbed her face into the topography of her swordman's back before settling it into the space between his neck and shoulders.

She couldn't stay awake for long, the intimacy subconsciously evoking memories of latching onto Ace and all the security the action signified.

* * *

Luffy awoke on the roots of a tree rather than their branches, but was satisfied that she still managed to sleep in a tree in the loosest sense of the idea. Technically, Zoro had obeyed her orders.

She felt the warmth of his body behind her and couldn't help but notice the heavy snores. It was just before dawn; as good a time to still be sleeping as any, but she could hear footsteps through the brush and quiet human voices.

They certainly weren't concerned with Luffy and Zoro's presence. With her limited sense of direction, it took a moment for Luffy to even realize that the group on the other side of her tree were all heading in the same direction. She could tell they were a family, judging by the changes in small voices and the concern about making too much noise.

Were they more displaced townspeople, scavenging during the time they believed Buga's crew wouldn't find them? Probably…

But where did they come from, exactly?

She had forgotten about the little problem that came from no longer having light pollution to follow from over a hill. Neither she nor Zoro could easily make it back to town without aid, right?

Wrong. She shook her head with a whispered laugh. As always, there was the easy way.

She rolled away from Zoro abruptly. He predictably slept through this.

She wound up her arms and then thrust them at a high branch of their arboreal shelter, slingshotting the entirety of her body into the air.

She flew above the canopy and narrowed her eyes to find her quarry in the distance. Already basking in her success, she grabbed at the top of the next tree, if only to get a better sense of how far her little band of two had to go to reach their destination.

She… got a little ahead of herself. It was fun to slingshot oneself from tree-to-tree, and by the time she remembered she had to go back and get Zoro, she realized she had no way of knowing where she'd left him.

Oh, well. He was a capable man. He would find her eventually…

She shielded her eyes from the now rising sun during a long bound and tried to figure out a way to send Zoro the message to wake up and follow so he could at least get a head start on this process.

The means hit her with an immediate bang when she had, at last, managed to make it to town. In a frenzy of excitement, her last leap propelled her to dizzying heights in the air above the settlement.

She had the ability to scan the entire town from this position, and was taking her time in the hunt of an orange head when the cannonball hit her on the side of her waist.

The other her had been lucky to have had a feathery bird decoy to absorb the majority of the hit. The Buffoon Ball, or whatever it was called, packed a super-heated concussive punch and more shrapnel than she'd remembered. It was like being punched by an engorged, titanic Ace in a mood combined with being chewed on by hungry, oversized wolves.

She felt herself expand without permission as her body did its best to protect itself. The miracle of her anatomy meant she kept all of her limbs when she inevitably fell into a roof (into being the correct operative term here).

She laid in someone's attic bedroom, bleeding and burnt, appreciating the sunlight for two minutes or so before she got to work ripping things that didn't belong out of her hips and left underarm. Whoever owned the home she'd been blasted into probably wouldn't appreciate how she then proceeded to cannibalize their gaudy pink sheets to make bandages or the fact she raided the closet for a similarly red vest to replace the one that had just been torn to shreds.

To be fair, she was a pirate, and what was left of her former top could fit in a single pocket if it was really wadded in there.

She felt her hat and winced when she found a tear on the brim. That made her both incredibly sad and angry, but only Buggerty should really have to suffer for that.

On the bright side, there was no way that Zoro hadn't heard the clarion call of the clown pirate's cannons.

* * *

He didn't. Zoro immediately snapped awake at the sound of a distant explosion, grabbing his swords and reaching for his sleeping captain… only to realize she was gone. He felt a headache coming on and began sweeping the area, calling for Luffy as loudly as he cared to. Only a couple of broken branches that weren't there the night before gave him any indication as to what had happened, but this was still insufficient to lead him to his quarry.

Where the hell had he bedded down? The whole forest looked the damned same. He ultimately picked a random direction and began charging in a dead sprint. Whatever that had explosion had entailed, he had the gut feeling that Luffy was directly involved, and he'd be damned if he missed out on one iota of the action.


	8. We Could Have Done Better

Luffy sprinted through the streets of the town with all of her senses strained whilst the sun rose to its zenith. While the strategy of searching the town for Nami by hand had all the grace of a freight train plowing through the ocean (which was a strange metaphor, she realized), it was the safest way to start her mission.

Unfortunately, while the clown pirates were easy to detect (and there were several bands milling about the city; she could hear them), Nami was not. The girl knew how to hide, and Luffy had never been able to memorize the house in which she was hiding in her stolen memories.

To be fair, most of the dwellings in this coastal city looked identical.

As the hours wore on, Luffy grew bored and hungry. She hadn't been above grabbing a quick meal in the house she'd become acquainted with not long ago, but she had made no satisfactory discoveries since. It was this fact that drove her into yet another empty home, where she helped herself to some overripe fruit and time to go over her plan.

If Nami was already here, then she would need rescue from the men that had originally pursued her. On the other hand, there was no guarantee that the chase hadn't already occurred and Nami was either already dead, or she had found some way to weasel her way back to that Bugaboo fellow. Due to both denial and her optimism, Luffy was inclined to believe the latter.

If Nami was as clever as her future captain remembered her, Luffy just had to get to that damnable clown. That was where Zoro had found them last time, right? She had no reason to doubt this wouldn't reoccur, playing with causality though she was. Trusting Zoro wasn't the problem, though. She needed to get to Boggy and still somehow ensnare Nami into their crew.

Direct honesty wasn't a great idea. She'd sound more like a lunatic than usual, and there was only so much insanity Luffy could embody before she put the more socially delicate of her crewmates off. At the same time, lying outright to Nami, of all people, would be hard to pull off without plenty of time to think about what she would say.

Perhaps she should bribe her? Literally kidnap her? Well, the first required money, and the second made her ill. She really should have thought this plan through further than "find Nami and think on your feet because that's just what you do".

On that note, she was thinking too much. Luffy, frustrated and sore, shoved the door to the domecile open once more and took to the cobbles. The pirates were up on the terrace, and she would walk there.

Luffy needn't have worried. She could hear Nami's voice when she ascended the stairway to the rise that housed the pirate encampment. With typical bravado, she could hear a couple of people whispering to each other as she made her way there, despite the loud roars of what must have been some kind of celebration amongst the clown's crew. Two guards with hilariously large cutlasses blocked her access to the bulk of her enemy's forces.

"Now, now," the man on the left drawled, looking her up and down. "What do we have here? A little lost doggy?"

"Maybe a deaf bitch," his partner added, "-Because all the regular dogs heard the captain when he said you'd better leave town if you wanted to live." The man kept making words with his mouth and paid no heed to the fact he'd painted his face as a mime rather than a regular clown. "Maybe we should just go ahead and give her this notice… manually."

The threat of unspecified violence went over Luffy's head due to her fixation on the guard's chosen costuming. She stared at him blankly. Why was he talking if he was trying to pull that off?

"Look, if you _can_ hear, little doggy, you'd better clear out now or take us up on our gracious invitation." the first guard said, his voice rising in pitch in anticipation of what might follow.

"Nope." Luffy replied simply. "I have business here."

The guard of the right scoffed while the one on the left shook his head. "Nice try, but we aren't hurting for wh-,"

Already done with this conversation, Luffy banged the mens' heads together in a rapid motion.

With that, she now had the attention of the pirates above. Whatever they were celebrating came to an abrupt halt. There was a rising wave of excited murmurs and the sound of weapons being claimed and readied.

After only a few seconds, their captain gave the order to deal with her in an incredulous, high-pitched voice. She let herself go as wild as she could without cheating or indulging in a high involving more than one self. She kicked, punched, and headbutted her way through a score of surprisingly violent mooks, wincing as she went. This wasn't due to any moral conflicts, however. Unlike the last set of henchmen she burned through, these were actual buccaneers. She didn't bother to hide her powers and took several foes out at a time.

This was not kind to her shrapnel wounds, despite the effort she'd made to stop their bleeding before.

Re-opening them was, in fact, the furthest thing from smart. But Luffy didn't feel like being intelligent: She felt like beating things up.

"Monster! It's a monster, you guys!"

"Kill it! KILL IT!"

"Oh, Gods, my SPINE!"

"Where's the booze?! Somebody splash her and set her on fire!"

"Murder that flashy bitch!"

In her frenzy, she could hear Bunny shrieking profanities at her. Ignoring the attempts at personal arson being visited upon her by the clown's resident pyromaniac, she hazarded to steal a glance at him when she got to the right angle. He was furious, turning as red as his bulbous nose. She didn't linger on him, though, as Nami's presence at his side was far more interesting a development.

"MOHJI!" Came the stiffed captain's shrieking voice.

The motony of her enemies broke when she found that the things she needed to beat up upgraded to a familiar lion-taming man. She narrowed her eyes at the man covered in improbable body hair. It was hard to prosecute him for a crime he may not have committed in this reality, but she remembered terrible people. This was one of them, and she had no reason to think he wouldn't torture animals for fun in this time-space continuum.

"Mohji, kill this little upstart, would you?"

"Oh,you don't want to do that." Luffy said, reliving how this entire thing had gone down last time. She stared at the lion straight in the eyes. She tried to give him a telepathic idea of how much the next thirty seconds would hurt. She knew, in the broadest sense, that she had intimidated animals in this way before, but she honestly couldn't remember: a)if it was in her current body, or b)exactly how to do it.

"Oh, but I do. You'll see what a lion does to earn it the title of "King of Beasts"!" Mohji shouted, his spittle flying everywhere.

The lion had started to shake and took a few steps back, proving that the two weren't entirely on the same page.

Luffy smirked in her triumph, though it was short-lived as the lion charged her only moments later. Clearly, she hadn't mastered whatever skill was necessary to scare beasts away.

That being said, she HAD mastered the skill that allowed her to slide under the lion and thrust out her fingers, entwining them into a net.

There was a sound of a spectator retching in disgust at watching her stretch to truly grotesque proportions. Luffy grinned.

Once she'd limited her opponents' movements, she ran in the other direction until she felt there was enough thrust. She had to hurry, as her not-so-little friends strained against there bonds, but once that was complete, she let her feet leave the ground, her toes pointed together like an arrowhead.

She screamed, more out of a need to make some sort of noise to cover her shock from the recoil than anything else.

It connected with a satisfying squishy thud, and Luffy faced Mohji's screaming rage at the damage she'd just caused his precious pet.

The lion wasn't completely done, though. She'd broken a couple of ribs, but it was a monstrous creature.

She slung herself near the edge of the terrace, out of their reach, and began charging her devastating double-handed punch. Like idiots, Mohji and his lion came at her anyway. While her knowledge of physics was limited, she knew that this would hurt. She punched the lion in the nose this time, forcing it and its rider back into the pub and reducing a wall to rubble.

There was a pause in which Luffy hazarded another calculating glance at Nami, but the peace was not to last.

"You! I'll KILL you!" she heard the man yell from the wreckage. "You'll pay for what you did to Richie!"

Luffy felt wetness on her shirt. She had already paid for something, dammit, and she wanted a return for her investment.

"Stand down, Mohji!" his captain demanded. "She's too strong for you!"

Luffy stole another look at Nami. She was standing still, clearly disconcerted and probably formulating some sort of plan. There was no warmth to be found in those eyes.

"What are you?" Nami asked, her voice steely.

"A rubber human," Luffy responded casually between deep intakes of breath. Nami blanched.

"Another person who has partaken of the Devil Fruit, hm?" the clown captain asked, intrigued. "You're strong, yes, but even a Devil Fruit won't save you today!"

"From what?" Luffy asked, trying to stifle a laugh and act genuinely confused. "Am I being threatened?"

The other captain bristled.

"Cabaji, perhaps you can succeed where your underling has failed, hm?"

"With pleasure." came a voice from above.

A familiar man on a unicycle appeared before her, leaping out of nowhere and landing beautifully. Luffy felt twinges of envy and admiration at his grace. Unfortunately, that was overshadowed by seething rage as she remembered slights from another life.

This enemy, with his gleaming hair and ridiculous scarf, was an acrobat that would fight dirty and wielded blades. She seldom fought anyone who did so due to the fact that they were her natural foe and Zoro… Well, at the very least, he was the reason for the renewed adrenaline rush coursing through her system.

"It seems like your luck has run out, little girl. Maybe you should go home to Mommy." Cabaji cooed in her direction, slowly approaching like a specter caught in drying maple syrup.

"Don't worry, I'll send her your pieces arranged tastefully in a little box."

"You are a ridiculous man and your threats are dumb." Luffy deadpanned.

"Oooh. Was that supposed be a comeback?" Cabaji asked, a note of amusement hanging in the air.

"Nope, just a couple of weird sounds I made with my mouth you happened to interpret as words." Luffy stated, letting the absurdity of the statement sink in and taking advantage of her foe's shock at her obtuse follow-up to an initial bout of obfuscating stupidity to put some distance between them.

She had to do her best to stay one step ahead of this man's sword. That was going to be tough, considering that once he pulled it out of his esophagus (which for some reason didn't elicit the same disgust as her fingers turning into nets did, but whatever), he seldom stopped moving with it. She had to basically remain beyond his range, but that wouldn't always save her from some of his more creative attacks.

She slingshotted herself around the terrace, stalling for time in the hopes Zoro would arrive. Well, that, or manifestations of Cabaji's stupidity. She didn't really care which. However, neither were quick in coming. After only a couple of minutes of this, she was dangling at the end of her proverbial rope having already dealt with Cabaji's ability to ride up sheer walls and his apparent need to throw explosives disguised as children's toys. It was the thrown daggers that caused her the most trouble, though. She had one stuck in her thigh, for heaven's sake!

"You know-," Luffy panted, fog fighting to engulf her vision, "-you could have made other things into bombs."

Blood was now dripping onto the ground whenever she took a moment's pause.

"Of course," Cabaji agreed from behind her. "-but that wouldn't have the same FLAIR!"

The last word was punctuated by a lunge at her open wound, but Luffy knew his patterns well enough to dodge to the left and clothesline his nether regions. Sweet, sweet catharsis.

Cabaji's eyes practically bulged out of his head. Predictably, he followed this up by emitting a choking sound and sliding off the front of his ridiculous vehicle.

"Come now, Straw Hat." his captain growled from the inside of his pavillion. "That wasn't flashily fair."

"I don't care!" Luffy grinned at him widely, unable to help but notice that Nami appeared to be biting down laughter. This was a helpful observation, as it grounded her as gravity ceased to function. Still, Luffy wouldn't let a little thing like massive blood loss stop her from trying to kick this man's ass. She'd made a promise.

"Come at me, Bro!" she shrieked, snapping back her arm and twisting it dramatically.

To her left, the acrobat was pushing himself up with shaking effort.

Oh, dear. That meant the battle could still potentially be two-on-one.

Luffy looked at Nami with askance.

Nami acted like she hadn't noticed. This was in her favor, as the clown gave her a sidelong glance, his lips pressed into a literal thin red line.

Luffy growled and threw her corkscrew of a punch right at that horrible, bulbous thing in the middle of the clown captain's face. She felt it dislocate with a note of muted glee. He flew backwards through the back of his luxurious tent, cracking the pub's wall further as Nami stared in shock and awe.

"Nami! Don't just stand there, do something!" Boghi stammered, his nose gushing blood from Luffy's punch. Nami gulped and pulled her power pole out of its carrier. She hesitantly brandished it at Luffy.

The young woman was barely concealing a tremble, but the coldness that Luffy had noticed before was gone. The creature standing before her now was a vulnerable human trying just as desperately to gain an advantage of the situation before them as she was.

"Don't point that thing at me unless you mean it." Luffy whispered, shaking her head to try to right her balance.

Nami approached, not putting the weapon down.

"Oh, our new firebrand wants a piece of this action?" Cabaji asked, rushing past Luffy once more, cutting cloth instead of flesh as she flew backwards in yet another dodge. "Should I herd her towards you, Nami?"

"I suppose," Nami answered, voice barely concealing a tremble that contrasted with the smile forming on her lips.

Luffy spat out blood and struggled to right herself. She sensed Cabaji coming close but couldn't quite bring herself to dodge this time. Thankfully, it was not to be a lethal blow. The man's unicycle-fueled sandals made contact with her backside and drove her to the ground in front of Nami.

Undaunted, she still tried to get to her feet. If nothing else, Nami would give her time for this, and even the now-armed captain of the clown pirates had stopped in his tracks, keeping his knives in his hands instead of throwing them at her.

Morons.

These men were morons. Was it any real wonder Nami had so much success conning people like this?!

Luffy trembled with the effort but pulled herself to full height next to Nami. She was shorter than the redhead and had to look up to make her resolute eye contact. At this distance, she could see the lights dancing on her future friend's irises, even with blurry vision. Perhaps it was the loss of blood, or that same stroke of brilliant luck that often relentlessly pursued her, but Luffy decided to do what felt natural. For all her plans, there was no way to truly control life itself.

She would trust Nami; even without the truth spelled out in anything other than actions between them, and even though she was a stranger.

There was a burst of some kind of communication between them, then, and somehow Luffy knew Nami had a plan for what would follow. She fell to her knees in front of the navigator and let herself get thrust backwards by a powerpole strike to the face. It wasn't gentle, persay, but neither was it painful.

Nami now stood over her, kicking at her experimentally as Luffy strained to keep her eyes open. She was taking her sweet time on the next phase of her plan.

The clown cleared his throat loudly, following the sound with an expectant hum.

"Are you going to give me a gun, or do I have to do this with my goddamned stick?" Nami snapped back, her bloodlust suddenly convincing.

Buggy adjusted his broken nose and just sputtered, "What the hell do YOU think?!"

"Really? It's so inefficient..," she muttered, wrinkling her nose and looking down.

"She BROKE my flashy nose!"

"I know, I know," Nami placated, one hand open in an understanding gesture. "-it's just that I only just got my pole cleaned, you know? I mean, it has a nice finish, but the smell of blood just doesn't-"

"Shut up and do it." Buggy growled, the frenzy in his tone replaced with calm murderous intent. "Prove your worth to me."

Whilst turning back to Luffy, Nami's eyes appeared to focus somewhere far away for a split second, but she shook her head and returned to the task at hand. She let her fingers tense over her weapon and thrust down at an angle into the pirate's bloodied clothes.

Luffy let herself scream in pain, but it was more from the pain catching up to her after the adrenaline started to wear off than Nami's brutal textile attack.

Standing in such a way as to make the illusion perfect, Nami proceeded to "murder" the young woman beneath her, coating her staff in blood she didn't shed and flecking it onto her legs to make it seem more realistic.

Groggily, Luffy wished she had the energy to become another version of herself to see how this could play out, but that wasn't an option. No, for the moment, all she could do was get irritated at the fact that Nami's stalling hadn't brought Zoro to their position any faster to dispense with Cabaji or help them escape. Well, that, and let herself lose consciousness at last.

A nap sounded nice. She would heal quickly and be back stronger than ever if they could just play for more time. A couple of days, perhaps? Or Nami and Zoro could take out that Boogie fellow on their own…

Her vision blacked out.

"LUFFY!"

Sounds started becoming distant, too. Therefore, she could be forgiven for having a hard time focusing on what she was certain was Zoro screaming. It was about time he arrived!

Luffy really hoped he didn't try to kill Nami and just took a moment to think. Also, she hoped he didn't get stabbed.

Finally, how many times was she going to use playing possum as a legitimate strategy? She'd… have to do better...

Oblivion took her.


	9. We Are Not Subtle

"LUFFY!"

Blatant avatars of rage come in many shapes and sizes. Nami was more than aware of this, having seen her fair share of them in the past. That didn't make her recoiling any less of a natural reflex. After, this was what any living thing would do when a new fighter hurtled into the fray wielding one sword more than any sane person would deem necessary.

She could feel the heat of him at fifty meters.

Perhaps in better circumstances, someone's comrade would take the time to gauge a situation before rushing in, announcing their presence like some kind of moron inflating a dirigible-sized target over their heads. Unfortunately for her, this was not that day.

He was closing in rapidly, jumping over unconscious bodies and up a narrow railing Nami would never chance. With a start, she realized that he had marked her as prey in order to avenge, well, what effectively turned out to be no one.

She barely had time to register what was happening, but Nami had her primary asset to work with. She watched his muscles ripple, the angle of his pivot. His first attack could be parried with her pole if she felt the need to engage. She could just shout out the truth, of course. His little friend was still very much alive. On the other hand, Buggy or Cabaji would probably kill the both of them in mere seconds after this admission.

As Nami considered staying alive to be more important a virtue than sincerity itself, she chose to purse her lips and look for a way out of this. Someone her beliefs isn't craven simply because they are afraid. They are craven because it is a moral imperative.

Nami flipped backwards before the swordsman could reach her, sticking the landing like a cat and baring her pole in lieu of fangs and a hiss. A small wind passed between them. His landing had created something of a whirlwind effect, and those eyes…

She shivered as something subconscious identified them as predatory. Perhaps that was why he covered his head: to force foes to make eye contact.

He flew at her, lashing out a single strike from three points. She managed block the worst of it but flew backwards, her quarterstaff scarred and thrown from her grasp. Her shaking legs would not be conducive to escaping. She desperately needed to turn his ire. She, to her shame, had to rely on someone else. Only one was a safe bet at this point.

"Captain!" she shouted, betraying genuine fear.

Buggy the Clown had not been in the same position as his new crewmember. He had the luxury of watching and identifying what Nami could not. Also, despite his fearsome reputation, he wasn't about to let the young girl who'd just shown her worth to die unless it meant a victory against the celebrity before him.

"Roronoa Zoro, have you come for my head?" Buggy asked, haughty despite his mighty nosebleed. Zoro. The swordsman gave him a sidelong glance, murderous as ever.

Nami's pallor gave ghosts something to aspire to. This was Roronoa _Zoro_ , one of the most dangerous men on the Eastern Blue. And she'd pissed him off… by doing the right thing.

Zoro grunted assent, narrowing his eyes and taking in what was clearly Luffy's doing. There was something unspoken in the sound that set Nami's hair to stand on end. She took a step back as Zoro pulled out his swords into a dramatic pose, nearly taking her nose out.

She let her eyes fall on the unconscious Luffy and allowed herself to wallow in the irony of the situation. She had made an enemy by positioning herself to backstab this man's bounties and delaying his companion's demise.

Confusingly, the very idea of the enemy of one's enemy being their friend was subverted in such a way that Nami had to forget the idiom entirely as Buggy hollered for his first-in-command to fight.

Cabaji did this with glee, uncomfortable in his saddle but still quite dextrous. He came at Zoro from behind, calling him out by name and challenging him to the duel. Nami never understood why swordsmen felt the need to do this every chance they got, what with firearms becoming more sophisticated by the year, but she wouldn't complain now. If she had to put money on this duel, she would bet for the green and pointy devil.

Zoro shot his opponent a glare which might have been appraising if it wasn't for the palpable levels of enmity shadowing any other human attribute the bounty hunter manifested.

"I don't have time for small fry like you."

"Shame we don't feel the same way." Buggy interjected, pulling out his knives. "Because the victors will get to write this story, just like all the others."

The effect was less menacing for the crumpled, dislocated nose gushing all over the man's face. Zoro had to spin around as Cabaji wheeled behind him. He was now surrounded by a perfect triangle of supposed enemies, and Nami could tell from his posture that he didn't come here for a drawn-out fight. This would be over quickly, one way or another.

"Your grave shall mark my greatest victory yet," the clown captain asserted, attacking Zoro head-on. He was ripped to pieces for his trouble, which only reduced Cabaji to chuckling. Nami couldn't hide surprise and horror. She had intended to rob this man blind, but not kill him. Killing… that was the purview of pirates, criminals, and.. well, Zoro, apparantly.

She fought to keep her lunch down before noticing the utter lack of blood. She took in a deep breath.

Zoro stared at Cabaji like a madman for a moment, leaving his back to Buggy's remains. Cabaji took advantage of this moment to jump up into the air and throw tiny daggers and rings. Nami didn't think he was putting forth a great deal of effort considering how well he'd done attacking an incredibly mobile opponent mere minutes before. This was child's play for the bounty hunter.

He threw himself into the fight, shredding the acrobat's toy-based weaponry into nothing, enduring explosions like light breezes. The only thing that Cabaji consistently seemed to put any effort into was riding away, though, and after six passes, he did nothing but throw a smoke pellet into Zoro's vicinity.

The reason for this became obvious in a split second. Zoro's eyes widened as a knife jutted through his haramaki. He'd been stabbed, and Nami had been the only witness to the clown pirate's horrifying revival.

"I guess you didn't hear… but I'm a chop-chop man." Buggy said, giggling at the end of the sentence for emphasis.

Nami didn't understand how those words were supposed to make a coherent sentence, but Zoro did. "Another… fucking… devilfruit," he murmured, his rage now mixed with physical pain. "It figures you'd fight dirty."

He took a few rattling breaths.

Cabaji began a flurry of slashes through the rapidly-thinning haze Zoro was slower, but by no means out of the fight.

"Pity. It looks like I missed your vital organs." Buggy said, disspointed.

"Consider it a gift, Captain Buggy." Cabaji muttered, his voice far more excited than it should be. "You left the best for me!"

Zoro responded by hacking apart a nearby clown limb between parries. It instantly knitted back together.

This was not a fight he could conceivably win.

Cabaji began to ride in a rapid spiral, alternating his tactics in the minutes that followed.

"Feel free to join in, Nami." he chimed. "Anytime you want, really."

She immediately smiled and waved her hands dismissively. "Now, now.. I wouldn't dream of stealing any of your fun, boys."

Apparently Buggy was fine with this answer, as maniacal laughter followed. "Now that's what I call respecting your superiors. Well said, Nami. Well said."

As common as her dishonesty was, Nami felt dirty. Every choice available to her was unpalatable, and she was beginning to see a pattern forming before her. Cabaji would aim some of his attacks at Zoro's unconscious comrade, trapping the pirate hunter in place so that he could mount a defense. Buggy would then make a couple of opportunistic lunges and soak up all retaliatory strikes. He became Cabaji's human shield when Zoro finally had a chance to turn the tides of battle against the only foe he could damage.

Any openings Zoro allowed on himself were met by attacks to his singular gaping wound.

It would be untrue to say Nami _couldn't_ allow this to continue, but it would be deceptive to say that she _would_. It took Zoro shielding his unconscious friend with his own body as Cabaji unleashed his explosive toys to force her hand, but she couldn't take this anymore.

"WAIT!" she called out into the chaos, casually walking towards the fight. Surprisingly, all three main participants seemed receptive to her words, though they all still pointed their sharp implements at one another. "Doesn't this seem… anticlimactic?"

"Hm?" Cabaji stared at her like she had grown a vestigial chicken wing, sporting only one feather and flapping haphazardly in the wind. It was a really specific expression, to say the least.

"I just mean… wouldn't it make more sense to do this in front of a crowd?" She shook her head. "Any old pirate can claim they killed a powerful opponent, even if they die in a fluke. Well, to be honest, anyone can brag about beating someone else. What matters is publicity."

Buggy made a stifled choking sound, sporting the face of a fool caught off-guard. She didn't know quite how well this idea would go over. While Buggy had been receptive to her meddling thus far, she was grasping at straws now and she knew it.

Zoro's eyes were hidden from her, but she saw him panting and shaking.

"Why, Nami…," Buggy started, his voice growling and low, before switching moods entirely. "What a FLASHILY good idea!"

Oh, good. She was still surrounded by idiots.

"I won't go quietly." Zoro muttered, voice somehow clear despite the sword in his mouth. He snuck a glance at his friend's bleeding body before adding. "-letting me live will be the last mistake you ever make."

Nami rolled her eyes and shoved past the acrobat to kick the swordsman in his wound with all of her might. She expertly bit down her bile once more as his eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped down, beaten and unconscious.

"Whoa, vicious." Cabaji whistled. "Remind me not to piss you off, my dear."

"Very well, Cabaji." she said sweetly, tracing a finger teasingly under his chin. "Don't piss me off." she whispered to sinister effect.

Buggy, meanwhile, laughed like he had hidden hyena DNA and picked up the unconscious Zoro by the scruff of his neck while stepping on his comrade's head in a pose of total victory.

Injured crew members crawled out of the woodwork, whooping and cheering.

* * *

Luffy opened her eyes to a brand-new night and blinding pain. She knew she had bled through her clothes, which had since dried into an hard, itchy mass against her skin. A brief flash of panic washed through her when she realized she wasn't laying down so much as dangling from a long, and admittedly shitty, noose off of a pole someone had found somewhere and driven into the patio in front of the pub. She felt the breeze in her hair and immediately known someone had taken her beloved hat. That almost made her cry out, but she managed to keep calm… for now.

The pub itself was still a mess from earlier, but someone had taken the time to set up a few tarps and stack the rubble to make a crude wall. There weren't any mooks strewn about, but no one had taken the time to right the tables or ruined crates from earlier.

This wasn't to say the area was deserted, but the scant ten crew members wandering around cleaning with lit torches and hand lanterns and what she assumed was a lone guard next to the stairwell hardly put panic into her heart. The fact the bastards had taken her hat? That was another matter entirely. She NEEDED her hat.

She could smell food from inside and began to drool. She thanked her lucky stars that she hadn't destroyed the kitchen.

Letting her eyes adjust to the darkness, she was pleased to note that she was alone. There were no other spikes. That faded in just a few moments.

No Zoro. No Nami. Even her hat had abandoned her. Damn, did she screw that one up. She had to try again, dammit! And no more playing dead, either.

She grimaced. Cheap talk from someone still doing so after being awake for a whole minute.

Her wounds still bothered her, but apparently her abnormally bountiful amount of blood handn't done her wrong. She was still woozy, still weak, but not dead and certainly able to make it out of her captivity without making a sweat.

She did so by merely stretching and popping out of the ropes. The drop was nothing. It was just loud enough that some of the men in the vicinity turned to look at her, but she'd already hid behind a few leaking barrels. Stealth was not her strong suit, but the last thing she needed was to run into Cabaji and Buggy together, brought out by an alarm. At least, not until she knew where Zoro was. She had heard him earlier today, right? He couldn't be _that_ far away.

A small wave of fear crept through her. What if they had already fought? Did Zoro lose? Did he get stabbed again? And what of Nami?! Did she get find out? Or worse, was the Nami she was saddled with not going to come with her?

She was met with resounding mental static and hunger bordering on starvation. First things first. They had delicious food inside.

She could hear the men outside had noticed her absence already, and had set off some kind of minor alarm, but as they suspected some refugee of cutting her down rather than impending violence, no one was shrieking for their captain to come out and deal with the situation. Even so, she needed to be careful. She wandered over to an intact window on bare feet.

She saw close to two dozen men in the common dining area. Most of them were sporting heavy bandages or crutches. There were two on stretchers on the floor. There was a distinct lack of hat or nakama. She really tried to feel something other than hunger looking at her victims, but there wasn't anything but annoyance that they were getting food and she wasn't.

She found the kitchen exit and found a broken window that let her enter. Being that there were only two cooks, this job was easier. She just grabbed an entire pan of half-cooked meat while they weren't looking…. And pulled it right outside to devour it like the animal she was.

Relief and clarity came almost instantly. Yes, she was still hungry, but she could function in combat again. Maybe even go for Cabaji Round 2 if she warmed up first.

Well, that is what she told herself. Instead, she clambered onto the roof of the inn and proceeded to dangle from the eaves of the roof. Humans tended to look for intruders at ground level. Not on rooftops.

She mimicked her primate namesake in the attempt to scout out all available upstairs rooms. One appeared to be the master suite. It was covered with circus decorations and knives, as well as a curtained bed opened to reveal that one Bohgzi dude sleeping like a baby. There, on his night table, was her hat.

She felt like she'd been violated, somehow. Bloodlust told her to break in. She could smother the clown with his own cushions. It would be so easy…

..but also dumb. She'd probably set off all the alarms the instant she broke the window.

Groaning, she popped over three more windows before finally seeing something promising. Nami was sitting on a chair in a small bedroom. How she'd gotten to get them to agree to letting her have her own room, Luffy was unsure.

Her would-be navigator was moving her quarterstaff over in her hands. Luffy imagined it was mostly being held together by glue and positive thinking, now. It had three slashing gouges in it.

 _Oh dear._

Luffy shook her head. She could blame herself for things later, if she was so inclined. Chances are, she'd have forgotten by then.

She looked for any means of quiet ingress. She didn't want to chance being ratted out by Nami, but it was a better chance of finding Zoro without engaging in combat that anything else she could see.

This window wasn't the massive, ornate, unopenable affair that had been Buggy's master chamber, but it still didn't look possible to open from the outside. Luffy still tried, and got caught by Nami in the attempt.

Nami's eyes first widened like she'd seen a vengeful phantasm rise from the grave. Given her appearance, Luffy didn't fault her this, but she quickly gave an upside-down thumbs up and massive grin.

It took a second, but Nami relaxed and quickly let her guest inside.

"Thanks." Luffy breathed, keeping her voice quiet. "I think I overslept."

Nami pulled a finger to her lips in the universal command for silence. She wandered over to a dresser and pulled some random clothes out of it before pulling a strange contraption out from under its high legs. She placed a black disk inside it and shoved a short needle on top of it. Stringed music sang through the chamber.

Luffy quickly changed into the new clothing. It was a simple hoodie fitted for a large body and pants that she had to fasten on tightly with a belt. She felt like a half-inflated balloon. Nami stared at her in morbid fascination, likely noting the mess that was Luffy's torso due to blades and a Buggy Ball.

"They're more shallow than they look." Luffy said simply, knotting the belt to make it fit her tiny waist. "-Besides, I ate a lot of meat. So they'll be gone soon."

"What kind of monster…." Nami began to raise her voice despite herself. Luffy grinned again, mirroring Nami's earlier plea for silence.

"I'm a rubber human." Her smile melted in half an instant. "But that isn't important right now. Where's Zoro?" There was a note of concern that palpably hung in the air.

"Alive. In the cellar." Nami answered brusquely. "-But I hope you don't plan to just run down there and break him out."

"Why shouldn't I?" Luffy asked.

"They left him with Cabaji. Fighting him didn't go well for you last time." Nami stopped for a moment, her face turning to consternation. "Why _haven't_ you asked me why I'm helping you?"

Luffy shrugged and waited for what must surely follow.

"Wait, why AM I helping you?" Nami asked with a sigh, glaring at her guest.

"Because we're the good guys?" Luffy offered helpfully.

"Bounty hunters aren't good guys."

Luffy laughed into her hands. This was going to be the hardest moment in trying to get Nami to join her, but dammit if she didn't want to see the look on her face.

"We aren't bounty hunters. We're pirates."

Nami's face contorted with immedate hatred. She moved over to the closed door and nearly grasped at the handle. She was probably about to shout the alarm. Luffy really shouldn't have pushed her luck, but no one could stop her now.

"I'm going after the One Piece." She said excitedly. "-I'm going to be the Pirate KING."

Nami changed her mind, if only to approach Luffy and lift her up by the shoulders of her shirt.

"I… hate… pirates." she hissed.

"You don't say." Luffy said, disinterested and smiling. "Oh, hey. You should join us!" she added as an afterthought. "I bet you're good with maps. That's what you were doing with Boogy-"

"-Buggy," Nami corrected.

"-with that one guy when I came to kick his ass."

"Well done, by the way." Nami droned. "You got my hopes up for nothing."

"If at first you don't suncteed, try, try again." Luffy said, adopting a sagely posture, only to be punched lightly in the head.

"It's 'succeed', Dumbass."

"So, you're like a navigator, right?" Luffy pressed the issue, nonplussed.

"...Yes."

"Then, yeah, I am TOTALLY bringing you with me."

"No. I won't work with dirty pirates."

Luffy started to suppress more laughter. "Obviously."

Nami narrowed her eyes. "I could just rat you out right now. Throw you to the wolves. Then there'd be one less of you." She spat in Luffy's direction. "I could have died because of you. That friend of yours was going to cut me into ribbons."

Damn. Luffy had to admit she had a point. "Yeeeah. Sorry about that. I swear I'm gonna fix that one. I just need to break Zoro out, and I'll explain everything. Can't have my comrades killing eachother!"

Nami literally pulled at her hair. "I'm not-and will _never_ be- your comrade."

Luffy ignored her as she was wont to. This wasn't a promising start to a beautiful friendship, but there was still time. She gave Nami another dazzling, inhumanly large smile.

"Thanks again. I really do mean it. I'd be a goner if it weren't for you."

This seemed to calm some of Nami's anger. "So would your friend."

All of the adrenaline and thirst for violence came back to Luffy in one fell swoop. She went rigid, her fists clenching. She was still a pallid, dirty thing coated in dry blood. Perhaps now she looked the part of a vengeful spirit.

"Did they hurt him?" she asked.

"Not fatally. Not yet. I convinced them to make a show of defeating him. It was the only way to play for time. Of course, if I'd known he was a pirate-," The second part of the phrase was barely a whisper.

"Than he'd still be my best friend." Luffy said simply, unable to resist letting her grimace contort monstrously. "And a man worth saving."

Nami shivered, her face conflicted.

"Where is the entrance to the cellar?" Luffy demanded, voice low and dangerous.

"You can't go down there. You'll get killed, and no one will be able to stop it this time."

"Is that concern for yourself or us? I don't give a FUCK about that." Luffy could hear her own verbal venom. Nami recoiled as the tone became darker still. "-Friends look out for each other, and I'll get him with or without your permission."

"E-even if you do , Buggy's men are scouring the forests and refugee encampments for an audience. If anything happens during the plan, they'll have no reason to keep those people alive." Nami pressed. She spoke the truth, though Luffy guessed she could barely admit this part of the plan even to herself.

Luffy glowered. This was not looking good. "Then what is your idea, huh?!"

The two were very lucky to have an orchestral accompaniment. The noise would have undoubtably attracted Buggy's crew into the room.

"Wait until noon tomorrow. That's when Buggy's going to kill him if the marines don't hurry the heck up."

"Did you call them?"

"What? No! They're never there when you need them." Nami trailed off. "Even if I had a mushi, I don't think that would change."

Luffy took a deep breath. "Fine. I'll just have to kick Buggy's ass in front of everyone, have Zoro take out Cabaji, and then leave it to you to help the refugees."

"That's not…," Nami bit her lip. Luffy knew full well that Nami had probably intended to take advantage of the distraction to rob the pirates blind.

"You have something better to do?" Luffy asked, temper rising again. Nami liked to think of herself as a good person, right? "You know that would be really messed up, right?"

"Erm-no… I just mean, I don't think I could, you know. I'm just a weakling, really."

Luffy looked from Nami's staff to her face, unsuccessfully hiding disappointment.

"I mean, I'm not a monster like you or Zoro, and can you really expect me to take on a bunch of armed men and lead a mob? I've only come this far because I'm clever." Nami responded defensively, her entire body ready to pounce.

Luffy flattened her affect. She didn't expect Nami to got worked up so damned quickly. Why should she care what Luffy thought?

"I bet you're stronger than Mohji." the young captain pointed out. "Besides, all you really have to do is get them all riled up. Then they'll just-"

"Are you judging me?" She asked. "You dare lecture me?!" Angry tears welled in her eyes.

"Get out." she demanded.

Luffy stared at her impassively, the judgement from earlier hidden. "I said like two sentences. Leg ashuras are supposed to be long."

"GET OUT." She repeated emphatically. Luffy didn't move. Nami had already involved the refugees. How was them fighting back with Nami's help any worse than what would happen to them otherwise?

"If you don't leave, I'll MAKE you."

Riling her would-be navigator up really felt better than it should have. She hadn't received Nami's affection, but at least this rage was something. The opposite of love wasn't hate. At least she cared enough to drag her, open the window, and literally shove Luffy outside.

Luffy quickly grabbed onto the roof to ease herself down, sneaking one last cheeky grin at Nami's window before wandering away from prying eyes into the dark night.

* * *

A/N: Please feel free to review. Reviews are addictive, even if it's just to tell me what I'm doing wrong. In fact, I'm hurting for criticism due to being terrified to show these fics to my friends.


	10. We Might Be Giant(esses)

Zoro leaned back against the bars of the cage into which he's spent the night. He could practically feel the puffy rings under his eyes, but that was a drop into the bucket compared to the gaping stomach wound he couldn't ignore.

Cabaji the acrobat may have been generous enough to keep him from bleeding to death during the night with a cheap styptic, but he had otherwise been a terrible nursemaid. The medicine had been just enough to staunch the bleeding. A single strenuous motion would undo all the good it had done.

Zoro had been understandably distraught that he had pledged himself to an idiot who could have very easily avoided dying and dragging him down with her by actually waiting to engage the enemy. He had also been troubled by the dirty trick that had ultimately pushed him at the same disadvantage as a king facing captured pieces on a Shogi board.

So, it went without saying that Cabaji's quiet, lilting laughter at his glowering face, regular comments about his abject failure to protect himself and others, his periodic kicking of the cage, and dozing off only to awaken suddenly and complain about his shitty luck in having guard duty instead of sleeping in his bed, well…

...it inspired a mental montage of all the ways he could silence the acrobat.

To add literal insult to equally literal injury, Cabaji was currently stroking Wado Ichimonji, his fingers smudging his prize less than six yards away.

It wasn't until Buggy the Clown proceeded to exit the bar with his ginger-haired lackey and a bloody, battered straw hat clutched in his left hand that he snapped back into reality. He had hoped, on some level, that Luffy had been psyching him out like the first time she'd lain motionless on the ground. The hat might as well have been her severed head for the punch in the gut that it engendered.

He didn't have time for any sentiment, but it lingered, muted by the pain. It drowned out whatever Buggy was saying to his (again, literally) captive audience. A quick glance revealed about seventy civilians penned in by armed pirates had come to watch him get shot by a cannon.

To be fair, it was an impressive cannon in terms of size and power, though the paint job was as tacky as the man about to execute him. If he thought that was bad, he soon learned the ammunition was even more obnoxious. Still, Zoro had heard its call the day before, and witnessed the terrible damage these armaments left in their wake.

Zoro, ever-stoic, wouldn't make a move to announce the incredible rage pushing him to struggle until he thought he had the strength to burst his bonds. Unfortunately, time was not his ally. Buggy had ceased to simply speak and was now using his hands to show off his weaponry and motion to his victim.

He wanted to hold his breath as the red-headed woman was handed a lighter and made eye contact with him. He returned it with a gaze that willed her to burst into a pile of ash on the spot. If he had wanted to kill Cabaji, the violence paled in comparison to what he would do the vile creature before him. For what she had done he would burn her into nothing, destroying her name and the very memory of her on the earth. Granted, Luffy shared the blame for the crime because she had put herself in the situation, but her punishment had already been meted, and no matter how much Zoro wanted to his captain to come back to life so he could kill her himself, that wasn't how life worked. Only the living could be judged in the mortal realm. It was in the name.

However, he would voluntarily die here if it meant he could drag both women down with him for the worse crime of turning his death into a humiliating publicity stunt.

His would-be executioner's eyes did not defy him. They were oddly blank, as if her soul had left her body. The husk that had been his enemy walked to the fuse and knelt down before it before stopping in its tracks to simply breathe.

The seconds dragged into years as Zoro's rage turned to puzzlement. There was no hiss of ignition.

Eventually, the hand with the lighter began to move, producing a small flame.

The delays in Nami's actions were not earning her any favor with her crewmates, but as the action itself seemed to elevate tensions, Buggy seemed content to allow it… to a point. As even his smile began to fall, he barked something, and Cabaji sheathed his stolen trophy to shove Nami aside, taking the lighter from her hands.

It approached the fuse. Then, all hell broke loose.

* * *

A rapid, crimson-tinged streak crashed into both of his executioners. Zoro's eyes widened at the familiar elastic snap that followed. A familiar figure rose to her feet and let out an intense bellow that elicited his hair to stand on end.

"..Luffy?" He called out cautiously. This… thing… was clearly Luffy. Pale, bruised, and shoddily bandaged, but still his captain. At the same time, it gave him the creeps. Its shadow was too long, and staring at her directly for too long strained his eyes. There was no joy for her in this reunion. Her eyes were glazed over and her movement calculated as she stole the lighter and jammed it into her pocket. She proceeded to take advantage of Cabaji's lack of preparation and used the same fist to devastating effect, ignoring the orange-haireded woman entirely and leaving Zoro's words hanging in the air.

Buggy and his cronies would not allow the attack to continue. The shock value that the thing had capitalized on had allowed her to damage the acrobat and forestall demise, but this was still a far different idea of the fight against Buggy than Zoro had in mind.

Cabaji didn't get back up, and the ginger woman backed as far away as possible from the unwavering creature.

A straw hat hit the ground, now unattended.

The woman dodged a knife attack from a floating limb and proceeded to use the heads of Buggy's men as a transportation method with improbably perfect timing. She leapt, threw and kicked with the energy of someone who hadn't been in brutal combat the day before. The attacks left afterimages that defied common knowledge about optical illusions.

Though Luffy would normally be considered anything but graceful, the ensuing destruction looked like a choreographed dance, with the woman dodging every single seemingly random attack from the clown pirate while still taking his men out in swaths. The latter act wasn't quite as impressive, as most were fresh from dealing with her the day before, but the former kept Zoro's attention locked on whatever his friend happened to be at the moment.

When Quasi-Luffy had reached her ultimate target, Zoro sensed something flying at his face. He could feel its presence before he saw it, and latched onto it with his jaws on instinct. Kuina's legacy had come home, and a glance confirmed that the woman he had thought his friend's murderer could be better described as a deliverer.

He cut his own bonds, but was still relegated to the role of spectator due to his own inability to affect metal bars.

"You had better be worth it." Luffy's accomplice said resolutely, finally staring at him with the soul she'd reclaimed. The swordsman felt uncomfortably like he was being sized up like a cut of meat by a chef. He wasn't a person to this woman. He was a tool.

He narrowed his eyes at her. He didn't need to dignify her quip with a response.

Their interaction was quickly interrupted by Buggy's predictable, desperate posturing.

"C-crazy woman! If you don't stop your puny attacks now, I'll give the command to have the crowd below killed in the blink of an eye!"

The thing borrowing Luffy's fists hovered in the air for a moment as Buggy flinched away from her assault. He began the process of splitting apart and materializing behind her.

"Luffy!" Zoro shouted, panic filling his chest despite the fact that he should have been too upset with the madness of their situation to care. From the outside looking in, watching someone subject themselves to horrific injury for someone else's sake was incredibly nerve-wracking. Saga's sacrifice had been hard enough to deal with. No, this thing was wrong because it wasn't like the woman he knew.

It didn't _react_.

Unlike the bullets that hadn't penetrated Luffy's skin even once, he could see where the dagger went in her back. He could see the blood it pulled from her and the fact she didn't flinch as the process began again. She didn't betray surprise or pain.

Zoro seriously considered throwing Wado at the clown, if only to buy the almost-Luffy a couple of moments. His survival still depended on it.

The double agent grabbed her scarred staff and launched herself off of the railings and into the crowd below, crushing an armed pirate guard in charge of a portion of the hostages.

"If you value your lives, then FIGHT!"

A resolute elderly man immediately stepped forward to take the cutlass from the fallen pirate, and the rest of the crowd followed his example of defiance in mere moments. Watching the same spectacle as he had, Zoro could sense the crowd's rage matched his own. They had been primed and ready for this moment. It was rather like watching a dry field catch fire. There was gunfire, but it was sporadic and brief.

Buggy's sputtering indicated that his Luffy-shaped opponent had resumed her assault, and judging by the miniature earthquake that followed, Zoro had picked a bad time to look away.

Buggy's head and torso emerged from a small crater. They showed all the signs of having been crushed by a falling boulder, and Zoro's bewilderment was only increased by the fact he hadn't seen what the hell had done such a thorough job of clobbering the pirate.

The clown was still in the fight, though; and he was getting desperate.

He sent his dagger-wielding right hand straight at Zoro's ribcage. Zoro might not have had much room to evade the attack, but between the lagging speed of the attack and his own considerable combat experience, this proved no problem. He grabbed onto the floating hand by the knuckles and thrust it into the bottom of his cage with the hilt of his katana and watched it flop like a fish, bemused.

Zoro recognized his comrade's shouts of rage and indignation at Buggy's newest underhanded attack and found a smile had crept onto his face. Maybe quasi-Luffy had more of the real thing in her than he though.

Without his right hand, Buggy was easy to pin down. Luffy systematically captured the remaining limbs and proceeded to shove them into her jumper as a means of capturing them. This process was aided by the fact her jumper was no longer on her, and Buggy had to deal with the fact that the pirate had chosen to strip in combat. His gaping face was soon jammed into the improvised bag with the rest of him.

Zoro couldn't peel his eyes away. Sure, her shirtless body wasn't something he hadn't seen before. The damage criss-crossing her skin and seeping blood through shoddy bandages were, however. As was a small, black spiral weeping through the skin on her back, sucking light in from around it.

It vanished only moments after his looking at it, but he knew what he saw.

Luffy dragged the wriggling jumper with her like a bag and proceeded to Zoro's cage. Eyes still unfocused and staring through him rather than at him, she snatched Buggy's hand out from Zoro's hold and proceeded to shove it into its prison.

Zoro looked on, confused, as she strode purposefully back to the cannon selected to end his life. She produced the lighter she'd appropriated from Cabaji and lit the fuse before calmly walking directly in front of it, holding the bag in front of her.

"DUMBASS!" Zoro shrieked at her. Even if she had a humanoid shield, the cannon was going to hit her dead-on. On top of that, if she killed or lost their mark, they could kiss their bounty money good-bye.

The ginger woman had clambered up the stairs back to the platform and had managed to scream the same word at the same time.

Luffy was unswayed. However, she did dodge out of the way of the cannonball at the last possible second in an incredible feat of timing, leaving Buggy as the only one who was launched into the sky and out of sight. His screams tapered away in the atmosphere.

The crowd below had clearly finished their own battle. Zoro nearly winced at their eruption of cheers. Luffy continued to stand close to the cannon, eyes staring at nothing for several more seconds before she staggered and shook her head.

Her accomplice walked over to steady her before Zoro could say a word. In a matter of moments, the almost- Luffy had returned to herself completely, laughing and muttering something that caused the other woman to smack her futilely in the side of the head.

Her eyes found Zoro's, focused and intense. All of his rage, worry, and pain seemed to fade away as she reformed formed another smile he knew was directed at him, and him alone. He felt the apology inside it, unsaid. On some level, he was still annoyed that she'd managed to nearly get him killed, but in all honesty, it was mostly relief that coursed through his bones, leaving warmth in its wake.

Luffy approached the cage and collapsed into a sitting position.

"Welcome back, Captain." Zoro greeted casually.

"Hey, Zoro." she replied, wiping a trickle of blood away from her lower lip. "Rough night?" she asked, smiling and tilting her head to the left.

He felt an eyebrow twitch. "Nah. Nothing to report. Just the usual,"

Luffy opened her mouth as if she were about to say something, but was interrupted by a shirt plastering itself to her face.

"Oh, for the love of-! Put some goddamned clothes on, Luffy." her accomplice demanded, looming over both of them like a shadow.

Said captain rolled her eyes and complied, pulling a loose yellow garment over her bleeding torso. She was rewarded with her hat being pushed onto her head with more affection that Zoro had expected.

The celebrating crowd continued to roar.

"Zoro, this is Nami. She's going to be our navigator from now on." Luffy stated, gesturing to the ginger-haired woman. Zoro felt an objection rising in his throat almost instantly, though he failed to give it voice. Nami reeked of ulterior motives and could hide her allegiance at a moment's notice. What would guarantee her allegiance to their cause?

Nami snorted. "You're not going to let that one go, are you?"

"Nope." Luffy admitted instantly. "I said what I was going to do, and you obeyed my orders. So, clearly, you agreed to last night's offer."

Nami's face became smooth and impassive. "Well, I don't see what you're talking about. You changed plans." She inhaled. "And even if you hadn't, you didn't really get me to agree to anything."

Zoro cleared his throat, as if trying to remind the two that he was there. However, the two women ignored him, intent in their conversation.

"What are you talking about, Nami?" Luffy asked, blood leaking out of the side of her mouth with more persistence than before.

"You said that you were going to set Zoro after Cabaji, remember? You were going to take out Buggy, Zoro was to fight the acrobat, and I was to start the riot." She cleared her throat. "-and you never said that my engaging in your scheme meant I had to join you."

Luffy's eyebrows furrowed. "N-no… I don't…, I mean- I didn't… What?"

What had been utter confidence moments prior cracked with an unfamiliar desperation.

Zoro let out a low laugh. Being dragged along by his captain was one thing, but he hadn't really fought back when she'd more or less forced him to join him via a penchant for gambling. Nami, however, had a fighting chance.

Luffy shot him a look of betrayal.

Nami sighed. "Besides, what I'm after is _money_. And it doesn't look like you're getting any bounties after that stunt you pulled."

"Then just steal from Buggy. Geez." Luffy quipped, irritated. "I mean, what's the point of being a pirate if you can't steal from other pirates?!"

Nami regarded Luffy coolly. "That treasure happens to be mine."

Zoro's couldn't help but interject his own snort to this. "Yours? I don't see you bleeding for it. I also don't see it in your hands."

The ginger-haired woman balled a hand into a fist. "I can't help being distracted, now, can I? After your captain's expert guilt-tripping?"

That had Zoro's attention. What was Nami talking about?

"Hm? What guilt-trip?" Luffy didn't seem to follow, either.

Nami growled. "You know full well what I mean."

Zoro sure as hell didn't, but was pretty sure he could see a slight uptick to Luffy's mouth than Nami couldn't.

"Look, if you're going to get some of Boogie's-"

" _Buggy's_ ," Nami and Zoro corrected at the same time, though not angrily.

"-treasure, that's fine, Nami. I mean, you can take a cut." With that, Luffy paused, breathing heavily.

"Keep talking," the orange-haired woman urged.

"You get a third, right? I mean, that's just basic math"

Nami glowered. "How much were your freaking lives worth to you?! Without my help, you'd both be dead. If I'm going with you, I'm taking at least half of the booty. In fact, let's go with sixty percent."

After a breath, Nami added. "-and I'm not going to become a pirate. Let's just say I'm sticking around with you as a business transaction."

Zoro's blood boiled. "Now, who gave you the right to-," he started to stammer, only to be interrupted by Luffy's graceful acquiescence.

"Agreed."

"Then we have a deal, Captain Luffy." Nami flashed the smile of a merchant who'd ripped off a customer and proceeded to shake Luffy's hand.

The swordsman stared at his captain as if she'd grown a second head. Then, without skipping a beat, he regained his composure. This was ultimately his decision, and if it didn't get them both killed, all the better. On that note, he had been watching Luffy's health deteriorate from her comeback through this entire conversation, and it wasn't getting any better now. Neither was he out of his cage. It was time to switch priorities.

He prodded his captain through the bars and pointed to the sturdy locking mechanism keeping him in place, pointedly ignoring his newest "comrade". Luffy, upon understanding the unspoken request, had no such qualms.

"Nami… Do you know where the keys are?" the smaller woman asked. "Sorry, Zoro. I guess I forgot about that part."

Nami slapped a palm to her face in frustration, but produced a key nevertheless.

Luffy acted like this was the most natural thing in the world, but there was no way her first mate was going to let that one slide.

"You could have gotten me out the _entire time?_!" He bellowed. "-and you didn't consider setting me free?"

Nami calmly placed the key in the padlock. "Now, now, Roronoa. I had no guarantee you wouldn't kill me. Besides, I had thought I would need further… leverage… to bargain my share with your captain."

Zoro seethed and made his way out of captivity at last. He stood as rigidly as possible, making himself taller than Nami. He'd work with her, and it would be unfair to claim she hadn't saved the lives of both his captain and himself, but he didn't have to trust or like her. She needed to know where she stood: entirely to close to Luffy.

He didn't like her, and judging by the way that Nami kept her confident posture and squared herself against him, she didn't like him either. He practically pushed past her to take his sheath back from Cabaji's unconscious form, among other things. As a bounty hunter, Roronoa Zoro was wise enough to know that you don't leave insensate foes behind you fully armed. In fact, it wasn't wise to leave enemies behind you at all. Between the motivation to guard his crew from reprisal and the fact he really wanted to finish what his imagination had begun, he prepared to finish Cabaji off, only to feel waves of disdain welling up behind him.

He stopped and looked back at the pale, copiously bleeding Luffy. For someone so weakened, her inner flame was burning as brightly as ever, and it had a will to exert.

Briefly, the thought popped into his head that he should be alarmed. Nami was one thing, but in terms of women with secrets ruling his life, Luffy was clearly the larger threat. He had bonded to her immediately, and it had nearly cost him _everything_ , and he couldn't bring himself to hold her responsible for it.

He could swear he felt something fueling his obedience aside from loyalty. Aside from affection.. or maybe even love. These things were probable motivations, but there was something else...

Something dark. Something that he could feel digging metaphorical nails into his back.

He couldn't grasp it, and he hoped to anything listening that Luffy couldn't, either.

For better or for worse, neither his misgivings or his sword could stay in place.

Nami groaned. "Please tell me you two intend to talk with actual words when we blow this joint."

Luffy's laughter wasn't truly an answer to her request, but Zoro wagered it was the most she was going to get out of either of them, as simply telling her 'no' outright like a spoiled brat felt unnecessary.

* * *

A/N: The plot thickens.


	11. We Face Confabulation

Laying down on the bed of the town doctor, staring at the ceiling, Luffy was in the process of trying to make sense of what had, in theory, been twenty-four hours; one day. One day, with all that the solitary temporal process implied. The sun rose, and though she hadn't been conscious to see it, set.

Birds chirped outside, quick to return to the homes that the island's townspeople reclaimed as soon as they sensed the danger had passed. Morning light streamed through a gloriously unshuttered window, forcing the young woman to squint.

It had been one day. One solar cycle. Approximately one twenty-eighth of the time she needed to wait between re-invigoration. But yet…

The young woman gripped the straw hat that Nami had so kindly repaired during the pre-dawn hours like a safety blanket as she stared blearily at the ceiling. There wasn't much else to do aside from think, forbidden as the captain of only two was from moving by a middle-aged man plying his trade. It was just as well, as being stitched back together when blessed with rubber skin was an odd sensation indeed.

She could hear the sound of a clock, ignorant to all of the violence that had passed so close to the wall it clung to. But, like the rhythm of Zoro's snoring in comparison, she couldn't peg her experience to the truth of time with the brain she'd been born with.

She didn't even have the capacity to measure how much time had passed as she'd taken advantage of the river of alternate realities whose current she was too desperate to ignore. The young pirate captain had backed herself into a corner when she'd left Zoro to his own devices. She'd screwed up even further in engaging the enemy alone.

Everyone could have died, and it would have been her fault. She had trusted Nami, which had worked out fine, but the possibility was still there, flashing like a distant lighthouse to signal the worst possible shore. Said rocks and shallows loomed even closer when she realized the extent of her folly.

Perhaps it would be better to call it "their" mistake. This Luffy had not been alone, which was something that both comforted and horrified her because of its implications. She had been driven into her position by stolen experience and fortune. Had the other Luffies been there due to the same circumstances? Were they like her? Yet, these may have been the least terrifying of the problems pulling at the edges of her mind.

She had fought Buggy and Cabaji so many times that she'd ceased to count the encounters. Instead, she mapped blows, mentally found likely combinations of attacks, and.. well… how to minimize damage. Not unlike the jaunt that convinced her not to hide in some other Luffy's skin, she had witnessed things that didn't just disturb her, they paralyzed her. She lingered too long at times, watching Nami bleed or Zoro staring at her with those empty eyes…

Perhaps the worst of it, though, was when the trip became punctuated by absence. The edge of nothing.

The strawhat pirate (or another version of herself: she could never really be sure who had the original idea, or if that was even a valid question to ask) had established a precedent of taking damage in his or her nakama's place. While many things could be said of this pattern of behavior, the simplest thing Luffy could take away was this:

It didn't always end well.

She'd never lingered so close to the brink before.

The icy tendrils that served as harbringers of nothing would thrust out of the thing that used to be the host's heart.

She had pulled away with all her might, leaving behind a black spot in the river. A dark, spiraling blotch in the waters of causality, pulled apart in the currents until it dissolved into the nothing it had nearly inflicted upon the traveler.

Trying not to thing about what could become of her, Luffy had plunged back into another self as many times as she had required. Only one time looking at what could only be the worst possible scenario guaranteed this level of effort.

In her mindless dedication, holding onto her own thoughts in her parasitic role, she had succeeded at what she had intended to do. Her friends were /safe/. She wasn't another eddie ripped apart in the great expanse in a current that she nearly had a hand in dooming.

However, the memories had mixed together, and that fateful night with Nami had happened eons ago. What had she said, exactly? She remembered goading the navigator, but had she screwed up the terms of their alliance? Had she said something she shouldn't have?

Luffy winced as the doctor of the town she'd help liberate pushed the needle into a particularly inflamed bit of skin. The clock continued to tick away on the wall, making a small and rhythmic sound. Zoro continued to snored asynchronously. Nami scribbled notes on a nearby table. Time moved on.

"Lucky little brats, aren't you?" The doctor grumbled, moving to get a roll of fresh gauze. He shot a glance at her sleeping first mate. "If he'd been attacked and hit just a little further to the right..." The physician shook his head. "..that would have been that."

Luffy avoided making eye contact while listening to the physician's following hums of disapproval. When he began the process of covering the sutures, his voice dropped to a low hiss. "As for you, young lady, I do not know why you aren't dead."

"I'm _very_ stubborn." she offered, grinning nonchalantly. To be honest, she didn't know enough about anatomy to fully understand everything a normal human body could take, let alone the anomaly she inhabited. Still, most people didn't have access to her insanity-inducing access to trial-and-error where their own mortality was concerned. She had measured her damage so that she could leave that ever-critical inch of her life intact when beaten. Not that she could tell anyone that without losing what little credibility she had left.

The doctor stared down at her, unconvinced. "I haven't ever worked on the body of a Devil Fruit User before. I'm pretty sure that has more to do with it than your being too stupid to know how to bleed to death."

The second sentence was punctuated by the low-pitched gravelly laughter of an chronic smoker and Nami snorting on the other side of the room. Luffy joined them even though it hurt.

"Yeah, I guess I am pretty stupid." she agreed.

At length, the doctor regarded Luffy with steely brown eyes and said, "In all seriousness, I can't emphasize enough how careful you need to be with these stitches. Your body might be elastic, but you can't be reckless with those wounds." He put his hands up in the air in frustration. "Who can say if you won't just pop like a balloon?

I still don't know why you and your crew can't just stay another day or two to rest. The mayor is more than happy to lodge your crew for months after all you've done for us."

Luffy could practically feel Nami's eyes rolling. 'All you've done for us' included leaving half of their hard-earned treasure, something that the newly-appointed navigator had been loathe to do, but too in love with her own reputation to stop her captain from making the offer. To be fair, it was hard to blame someone for making a bad decision when bleeding out, but Nami was up to the task.

"Yeah, I get what you mean, but I've got places to be, Grand Lines to conquer." Luffy hummed. "Pirate Kings do not rest on their florals."

Nami slammed her pen down on the table with sudden force. "They're ' _laurels_ ', Luffy, and I swear to God himself that you did that one on purpose."

She wasn't wrong, but Luffy was too busy enjoying the exercise of riling her up to give Nami the satisfaction of an admission. Perhaps that is why her navigator chose to ignore her for a couple of seconds.

"Doctor Wise, is there any way I can ask you to donate medical supplies in place of your care? I doubt these idiots have any desire to stay out of trouble. In fact, I'm will to be money that _this one_ ," she jerked her head at her bedridden captain, "will actually go looking for it!"

Luffy did the best job she could of looking hurt. "You're being mean, Nami."

"You shut your face," Nami snapped. "I still don't have any idea what the hell your hurry is. No one is claiming the One Piece anytime anytime soon, and I don't want to shove your organs back inside you when you decide to punch a sea king!"

"That sounds kinda fun, actually..." Luffy murmured, eyes brightening and reflecting the beams of sunlight invading her corneas, creating the illusion of starlight leaking out of her eyes. "Do you think there are any nearby?!"

"Don't you DARE get any ideas from my hypothetical worst case scenario!" Nami retorted loudly, pushing her fingers into her orange hair with frustration.

Zoro stirred long enough to be the primary suspect in the pillow-throwing incident that followed. The fluffy missile bounced off of Nami's face. She seethed. "Don't you go encouraging her, Roronoa."

This time Luffy's laughter was genuine. Somehow Nami's bitter mood at the fact she'd have to leave some of the treasure from Buggy behind with the townspeople so that they could rebuild their homes had helped set up the scenario her captain needed to avoid grappling with troubling questions.

It was worth being made the next target for a pillow attack.

* * *

The people of Orange Town (a name that left Luffy utterly speechless) were more than happy to donate a small ship to the cause of the tiny pirate crew. As far as Luffy could tell, it had belonged to someone who had died during the initial pirate invasion, and the townspeople felt it would better serve someone who intended to use it.

The vessel was a small green affair with a cabin hardly large enough to do more than sleep in comfortably, but it was a massive upgrade from the dingy they had been dealing with. Not that Luffy and Zoro would enjoy most of the benefits of the indoor space. They had swiftly learned that Nami had decided that the dry, safe space was for 'delicate ladies' only, and as long as Luffy was going to insist on taking her clothes off and laughing riotously every time Nami strung those two words together in a sentence, the pirate wouldn't make the cut.

That was fine by Luffy. She preferred being where she could see the vastness of the sea and hear its churning. She also had made a habit of sleeping curled-up next to her first mate, a habit that Nami also disapproved of, though Luffy didn't understand why.

Her two nakama shared a powerful mutual dislike for one another, and Luffy couldn't help but notice Zoro constantly interposing himself between the two girls. This made conversation a little difficult at times, but Nami was nothing if not creative in finding ways to manipulate Zoro into moving. She also demonstrated a great deal of cunning in finding small ways to passive-aggressively make his life a little harder, whether it was a small comment during a morning trading session or a bit of seawater that just _happened_ to get on his food ration.

Luffy hated it. Annoying one another was not only fair play but inevitable in such close quarters, but for her nakama to actively attempt to murder one another with the looks in their eyes with such frequency over a period of days…

Oh, what she wouldn't give to know her idol's solution to something like this. Unfortunately, all she could come up with when summoning the red-haired pirate into her head was rapport he'd already established with his men. Well, that, and him getting too drunk to speak a coherent sentence. And wriggling around like a caterpillar on the floor after Makino after she cut him off. Now that she thought about it, she also was pretty sure she remembered him in a suit carrying a suspicious briefcase, winking at her conspiratorially before entering a massive tower of glass and steel that she somehow knew was the headquarter to his massive criminal enterprise.

Wait, no, that wasn't helpful. She tried again.

She conjured up the sensations of being carried on his shoulders, reaching up to the sky and behaving like a child with an adult who loved them was supposed to.

 _...The sky was the limit, and she wasn't even scared that she was on a glass platform overlooking an incredibly deep canyon. There were people everywhere, and Shanks gleefully handed his stepdaughter a disposable camera. Luffy knew she could use the whole roll of film, and there was so very, very much to see! Ace was already posing next to a striking vista, his souvenir hat lopsided on his head._

" _Go wild, kiddo. Uncle Ben said he wanted to see at least one bird, though, so don't waste them all on your brothers."_

That one was sad by nature of it being wrong, but still clearly not the origin story that pertained to her universe, let alone one that she could use to gain insight into the current situation.

 _Shan Kus grunted, straining as hard as he could against the onslaught of the men with the red, thrumming blades. A bright green light struggled and sparked against the three attackers._

 _Luffy knew he had to take advantage of the time his master was buying to escape, but he couldn't move, his leg pinned under a slab of rock that was going to be the death of him._

 _He shouldn't have ever listened to the pilot's son Usopo and snuck away to this awful place. It didn't matter how well what he recorded would exonerate his friend. Shan Kus, the man whose reputation he was trying to protect, was going to die an admittedly **awesome** death, but a death nonetheless. _

_Unwilling to let this happen, Luffy reached out, hands shaking as the rock began to move…_

What the hell? Luffy didn't even know if that one was actually a crazy-ass dream as opposed to an alternate reality.

She took a deep breath in. Zoro and Nami yelled at one another about a rotten apple the swordsman had just bitten into. She had to at least try one more time.

 _Luffy could feel her face pull into a tight scowl as Shanks laughed so hard beer ran out of his nose._

 _She didn't know what was so funny about any of this. She had a black eye, and her interference hadn't mattered in the least to the dynamic still playing out in ugly ways on the beach._

" _Oh, Luffy, you adorable little jackass," Shanks sputtered, pulling her onto his lap. Her body didn't cooperate (she was being tough, goddammit, how dare he pick her up like some kind of simpering baby?!), but he was strong enough to place her there regardless. The tears she'd been holding back wavered on the tips of her eyelashes._

" _Life is never easy, kiddo," he said simply. She could still hear him smiling. "-not for you, me, or anyone else."_

 _The tiny little girl felt herself trembling, but Shanks had the decency to ignore it. His crew drank and socialized noisily in the background._

" _B-but all she had to do was fight back, too!" Luffy said, wiping her nose and trying to appear as fierce as possible. "So why,-" she shook her head, infinitely hurt by a small interaction. "-why did Miri punch me?"_

 _Shanks swallowed, taking a moment to find the proper words._

" _Because it wasn't your battle, Anchor."_

" _But those guys were ruining her sandcastles OVER and OVER. They SPAT in her FACE. They were buttnuggets! They're **always** buttnuggest and will **always be** buttnuggets!"_

 _Luffy endured a small earthquake as her idol proceeded to laugh heartily at her choice of wording._

 _The child, however, wouldn't have any more of it._

" _Quit laughing, Shanks. This is important!"_

 _Shanks turned his small charge over on his knee, biting down his mirth. "Look, Luffy, you can't control what other people do or think. You can't make your little friend stick up for herself anymore than you can make it rain,"_

 _Luffy bit the insides of both her lips, small rivulets trickling down pinkening cheeks. She swore she knew what was coming next. "-and you can't expect a bully to change just because you kicked him in the crotch."_

" _But at least I made him stop!" Luffy sputtered, pleading._

 _Shanks grew more serious at this, shaking his head. "All you did was prove your own power, Luffy. In all honesty, you probably made Miri's life worse."_

 _The child in his lap flinched as if she'd been slapped in the face. "How?"_

" _Now that boy will want to hurt her because he's angry at you, but you're too strong to hurt." he said simply, putting a comforting hand on Luffy's shoulder. "-and because you can't always be there to protect her."_

 _Luffy's diminutive hands clenched back into fists. "But she's my friend, Shanks… What am I supposed to do?!"_

 _Shanks closed his eyes in thought, then opened them just as suddenly. His face hardened in determination._

" _You must be as the wind, and fan the flames of her spirit!"_

 _Luffy was so impressed that she didn't remember the lump in her throat. Shanks was so cool!_

 _But she still didn't know what that meant. She ventured,"So I have to be a mystery wind?"_

 _Shanks frowned, his moment in ruins. "Erm, no. I just mean that you have to be there for her when you can and, you know, encourage her to stick up for herself in her own way."_

" _Of course." Luffy said, face altogether too straight._

 _There was an uncomfortable silence._

" _You don't know what I mean." Shanks stated with a sigh. It was a fact, not an opinion. His would-be student deflated. "Don't worry, Anchor. I'll just explain so you understand."_

" _Okay." the little girl agreed._

" _Find out what your friend wants to do about the bullies. Don't act. Listen to her. Then, help her if she asks."_

" _What if she never asks? What if she's too scared?" Luffy asked._

" _Then you be strong for her. Tell her you don't want to see her be hurt and do your best to be happy."_

 _Luffy furrowed her brows in puzzlement. "But, but… How can I be happy when my friends are sad or mad at me?"_

 _Shanks shrugged. "Sometimes you can't be. Other people are going to do what they are going to do. But when **you** have the choice to be happy, let yourself be happy."_

 _Luffy looked at Shanks like he'd spontaneously converted his goatee into a living snake._

" _Let myself be happy?" she echoed, the concept altogether too complex for her six-year-old brain._

" _Yep." Shanks tilted his head to the side, relaxing on his elbow. "You'd be surprised how miserable people get trying to control everything all the time. They get so mad that life isn't easy they forget how to smile."_

 _A hand settled in the young Luffy's unruly hair. "You won't be like that, will ya'?" he asked wistfully._

" _Little Luffy won't let some random buttnuggets rule her life, hm?"_

 _Luffy didn't know how to answer that. That was fine, as_ _they_ _seemed to be more of a rhetorical set of questions, anyway_.

A butterfly of warmth settled on a lotus of relief within Luffy's stomach. Despite her trepidation, she had found her Shanks. He didn't really look any different than the others. He wasn't even remarkably tall or short in the scheme of things. In essence, there were many like him, but this one was hers.

The fact her recollection of him had brought some decent advice to the forefront of her memories was really a bonus. Granted, neither Zoro or Nami fit nicely into the role of bully or victim here, but here Luffy was, letting herself get wrapped up in their personal conflict.

She couldn't follow Shanks' advice all the time. In some ways, his council was an anathema to how she lived her life. After all, if she just patiently waited for everyone she'd helped to ask for her help, she'd have lost Zoro, at the very least. Yet, at the same time, she ached to live the way Shanks had suggested.

Luffy sincerely wanted to live in both mindsets. She wanted to continue to run damage control and keep her friends and family safe. This instinct was especially strong after she had gone through countless alternate experiences to save them, but yet…

. _.but yet…_

Nami had slammed the door to the cabin. Zoro kicked it once for emphasis before sprawling out on the deck, eyes firmly shut. Almost involuntarily, Luffy felt a fond smile pass over her face. Doing what felt natural, she laid down beside her first mate, sliding her hat over her face so that only her grin would be visible to anyone laying eyes upon her.

Maybe Luffy didn't have to let her sense of having failed her two shipmates fundamentally stop her from being the person she wanted to be. So what if she had a whale-load of someone else's memories? So what if Nami and Zoro loathed each other so much that they might consider dropping one another into the drink while she was sleeping? Everyone on the dinky little boat was alive in this very moment, and Luffy was profoundly glad.

Even if it was just for now, the young woman in the straw hat let herself be happy.

* * *

A/N: Syrup Island is next, but I wanted a little bit of a transition. Plus, I got to have fun writing about Shanks.


	12. We Are In Need of Sausage

Nami thought she had conquered nightmares long ago. She had believed that she mastered the art of induced, dreamless sleep. In all honesty, she had _hoped_ as much, having lost so much of her life to viciously reliving things that no sane person would want to experience.

If someone she had trusted had asked but a week prior, she would have told them with pride that she had been sleeping like a guiltless child for nearly a year now. Unfortunately, her past performance was not indicative of current success.

She knew the lack of sleep was making her more irritable than ever. Her head hurt and she had very little patience for the adrenaline rush that kept assailing her when she finally awoke from her horrific ephemeral jaunts to see her two crewmates outside. Though it would be rational to feel that way when one considered just how off-course those two idiots could have steered their boat, the emotional impact came from something less distinct.

For a moment, she would profoundly regret her decision to follow the girl with the straw hat and aversion to modesty, because it meant she had to look at _him._ Roronoa Zoro, the man with the predator's eyes, who reeked of blood when no combat ensued, whose very presence made her hair stand on end...

...Roronoa Zoro, who gave his friend his own shirt as a blanket in the evening, watched the horizon for hours, and never complained about anything Nami hadn't instigated. She had seen how far he'd go for a comrade firsthand, so why couldn't she trust him? Why did she have to keep testing him?

The navigator's intuition was hardly ever wrong, which presented its own barriers to Nami's desire to cut her losses and leave the ship as soon as the opportunity presented itself. As much as she believed Zoro's presence conjured her demons into her nightly mental expanse, Luffy's soothed. That smile she kept sending in Nami's direction might not have always been entirely genuine, but it was for her. There was an implicit faith in those eyes.

It was difficult to rationalize that she instinctively reciprocated Luffy's trust. Especially in the wake of the realization that Luffy was like a dumb, needy kid; overly-attached, socially-inept, and more than a little self-destructive. She needed guidance from someone who wasn't just going to enable the worst of her impulses.

It was a responsibility that attracted and repulsed her in one fell swoop. Nami didn't have the time or energy to care for someone else… So how was bickering with the other woman more a release than a burden? Why was it so rewarding to put Luffy's repaired hat into her hands? Why did she want to devolve into happy tears when she succeeded in tricking Luffy into resting instead of playing rough? Why did it make her heart break to be pulled into that warm embrace? It was sufficiently saccharine to be sickening.

On the other hand, no one could say that life with her new companions was boring or without objective merit. No matter what she thought of the two personally, they were a source of free entertainment. Whenever the two weren't sleeping or eating, she had a chance of glimpsing something spontaneous and fun. A decent example included the time she looked up from her maps to see them having what they called a 'chicken fight'. Apparently, this was a game wherein opponents hopped on one leg and tried to knock the other person to the ground without falling over themselves.

She was tempted to yell at them for risking reopening their wounds, but the game never quite reached that level of intensity. When Nami finally civilly mentioned the risk of roughhousing while trying desperately not to poke fun at them, Luffy puffed up her chest and called it 'balance training'. In fact, this trend of screwing around and acting like it was some incredible exercise of strength became a pattern. For heaven's sake, the tiny woman spied the next island while being benched on a spare oar like some kind of idiotic barbell!

Nami found herself grinning despite her misgivings. No matter how terrifying Zoro might have been, he was, at the very least, a leashed tiger. She had to keep telling herself that.

* * *

Nami felt the relief of the seasoned sailor when they placed their feet on land after days at sea. The little voyage she'd just finished was short, but one can only stay on a boat in a tense social situation for so long. The sound of Zoro's heavy footsteps behind her did little to sour her mood.

"Welcome to Ingwa Gecko; home of Syrup Village!" she said happily, her job as navigator truly complete as Luffy joined her two cremates on the shore.

After a satisfying stretch, Zoro quirked an eyebrow at the copse of trees and narrow. hand-hewn path cutting up a gray cliffside. There wasn't a soul aside from them anywhere, unless someone counted the plethora of birds, insects, and fish that made their appropriate sounds in the morning sun.

"Some village," the swordsman scoffed. "Their harbor is just _teeming_ with life."

Luffy hummed, but not in any sort of committed response to either of the two. Her brows furrowed in confusion, and Nami swore she saw the young woman's nostrils flare as she sniffed the air.

"I think I might have been here before," the pirate said with uncharacteristic quietness, "but have _I_ been here before? Hnn."

She cocked her head so far to the left that Nami would assume her neck had broken if it weren't for the devil fruit Luffy had ingested. She had also put her emphasis in a weird place during that second sentence, but the older of the two women was in no mood to contemplate the idiosyncrasies of Luffy at that moment.

Zoro looked at his captain with a completely straight face while Nami, as usual, tried to actually find a way to speak using the appropriate apparatus; _words._

"Unless you come from a family that liked to buy-," she narrowed her eyes at the margins of her charts,"- _musilage adhesives_ in bulk, I can't imagine why you would have come out this way, Luffy."

The navigator chuckled. "Glue, huh? I wouldn't have even thought, just looking at this place."

Luffy still looked like she was more occupied with her previous thoughts than anything her navigator had just said, dammit, but still wasn't done asking questions. "Nami, do you think there's anyone here who could help us get a proper pirate ship?"

"No," the addressed ginger-haired woman immediately replied, not even really giving it a second thought, "but I guess there's no harm in checking. We need to resupply, anyway."

Nami knew better than to think Luffy needed her permission to better prepare her crew for the dangers ahead. In fact, if Luffy hadn't brought up the need for a bigger boat, the navigator would have breached the subject.

Zoro yawned, though whether this was from boredom or actual drowsiness remained to be seen.

Luffy paused, then let her massive, face-eating smile take back over her face. "Yeah! Let's buy so much food that the village will have no choice but to give us a bigger ship to hold it all!"

Nami knew she was playing into her captain's hands, but she couldn't help herself. "That's NOT HOW THAT WORKS!" she yelled, preparing to whip around Zoro to punch her captain's head, but Zoro had already taken a stance to make that difficult. Even if that hadn't been the case, her new friend wasn't even when the two had left her.

The sound of an elastic band snapping meant she'd already catapulted over them both, ready to be the first one to enter town regardless of how the other two felt about it. Well, as long as she could be trusted to follow a straight path to get to a destination; Nami really doubted that was an ability either of her companions possessed.

"Hey! HEY! Don't get too far ahead!" Zoro yelled in his friend's direction moments before Nami had the chance, fueled by what the navigator could only assume was valid concern, given the track record of the spitfire barreling towards Syrup Village.

Nami groaned as he sprinted past her, his stitches and inferior sense of direction be damned. Now she had two meandering sheep to look after. How was it that her job got _harder_ on land?!

"Wait for me, musclehead!" she called.

* * *

Luffy was sprinting as soon as she hit the ground again. She knew she could get lost, but there also wasn't any evidence of danger on this island. On the contrary; she felt incredibly secure. The environment here really did feel like an old friend.

The day was beautiful and bright, the air was clean, and she could turn her head any which way and see a handful of tiny white butterflies engaged in their annual dances.

There was also the benefit of only one main road, which was a help. It took her straight to the village proper. Once she could take in the sight of the entire settlement, she sat on a fence and waited, watching the townspeople coming and going.

There weren't many. At a glance, the strawhat captain guessed that the population of the village that she could see couldn't be more than a hundred and fifty. That didn't mean that there couldn't be more houses or shops hidden inside the many copses of trees, but Luffy didn't think that her nakama would appreciate her running off to make an official census of the population of Syrup Village.

"Hnnn." She stroked her chin and looked from each visible dwelling to another. None of the structures jumped out at her until she found the restaurant. No one could miss the building's purpose owing to the enormous sign that said as much.

As if on cue, Luffy's stomach grumbled. She frowned and looked down the path from which she came. She hadn't meant to get quite so far ahead of her crew, but she also didn't want them to lose track of her.

Thirty seconds passed, and the young woman's eyes wandered back to the eatery, conflicted. The food was there; she could smell it. It smelled like maple, sausage, eggs, and toast.

She was drooling like a waterfall now. Why were her friends so gosh darned slow?! They were like ducks with their waddling feet soaked in molasses in a swamp, and… Oh dear, it was thinking about molasses that proved to be her undoing.

At least, she reasoned, her friends could guess where she had gone. If they didn't know about her boundless appetite by now, they were never going to learn.

There was a little dinging sound that announced Luffy's arrival into the restaurant. It was a small, cozy place, containing only an old man behind a counter sipping something hot (Luffy assumed he was the owner and chef), and one olive-skinned young man partially covered by a divider enjoying a pile of hot cakes. At least, that's what Luffy could determine.

To be fair, Luffy wasn't very concerned about the food the teenager was eating. No, she was too busy letting her eyes travel up his right arm and to the curly, unruly hair that attached itself to the side of his head like woolen curtains.

She knew him from just these visuals, and something like anticipation rose in her throat as her eyes continued to make their way to his thick eyebrows and elongated nose. It was only when they stopped on his eyes themselves that the captain of nearly no one realized she had been caught in the act of staring like a madwoman. The expression meeting her own certainly cemented that impression.

"Can I help you?" the object of her intense gaze asked, an undercurrent of insecurity already present his inflection.

Luffy felt her instinctive smile conquer her face like Gol D. Roger did the Grand Line. It did nothing to calm the young man down, but she couldn't quell it if she'd wanted to. Instead, she hummed to make it seem more natural before taking a seat across from the startled boy across from her.

"Aah, yes." She said, placing her elbows on the table and letting her eyes close in though. "I don't suppose you know who I am, do you?" she asked, the question as perfectly natural to her as it was odd for her companion. She was positioned far enough in her seat that someone fond of personal space would find her perch intrusive.

The young man leaned back in his seat as far as the back of his bench would allow. "N-no," He stammered. "Should I?"

Luffy laughed, but it rang a little hollow. Something about this reaction seemed wrong. Where were the stories? The fabrications? Was she so strange an object that her vicarious friend didn't both with his regular defenses? Well, he didn't really have anyone to impress, to be sure, but…

"Not yet, I guess," she admitted. She fought the urge to steal an unattended sausage. "but I know _you_."

If she had to compare the adolescent in front of her to anything, Luffy supposed he would be a nervous rodent of some sort. He had a tendency to shake when excited. He was breathing faster, caught between suspicion and curiosity. His eyes flashed in a way totally unlike Zoro or Nami. It wasn't unpleasant, but she knew plotting when she saw it; and the young man was about to get very creative with the sausage she'd so selflessly denied herself.

"You look just like your dad said you did, Usopp," she finally beamed at him after a bit of dramatic tension linger in the air. Pirate kings were supposed to be masters of such things.

She spoke her words freely; they weren't lies. In fact, they were more true for Ussop than most human beings. How many people could say they looked almost exactly like their nymphal forms? Not many, Luffy would wager; she was very, very grateful for it.

She was still bad at lying outright. One day it would be her undoing.

The young man's fear melted away in an instant, replaced by childish delight.

"You know my old man?!" he asked, nearly dropping the fork he'd been preparing to use as a make-shift weapon should things have gotten much more uncomfortable.

"Yeah! How could I not? He's almost as good of a sniper as an over-sharer!" She laughed, though for a moment, she really hoped that the version of his father she brought to mind was her own. Usopp's complete resignation to sharing her mirth eased her mind more than she'd care to admit, "I swear, he never shut up about his cute little boy, and if I tried to change the subject, I'd literally be held captive!"

That sentence would be frightening without context, as Luffy had meant the word 'literally' as it was intended. Fortunately, the world she lived gave such situations acceptable niches. Ussop had clearly made peace with the fact his father trapped children in his lap so he could drunkedly yammer at them without the possibility of their escape a long time ago.

"Yeah, that's my dad, alright," Usopp said, his own grin plastered to his face. "How's he doing these days, Ms," he stumbled,"-er,"

"Monkey D. Luffy." Luffy said, projecting as much confidence as her frame would allow. "I'm the woman who's going to be the pirate king!"

Usopp may have gone for the sausage and fork again. Luffy could forgive him for that, but he could stand to be more subtle when dealing with a lady. For heaven's sakes, what a waste of perfectly good meat. If she'd really been a stalker suffering a psychotic episode, she'd have stolen his food by now. On principle.

After a moment of maintaining the direct eye contact, Ussop apparently changed his mind, letting out a long exhale. "You're _serious_ , aren't you?"

Luffy nodded, trying very hard not to look at the morsel dangling oh-so-precariously on Ussop's fork. It was glistening, for heaven's sake…

Usopp let a smile creep back onto his face. Faced with an audience he had obviously decided wasn't a threat, he began to shift his posture to radiate confidence that didn't reach his eyes.

"Then I guess I've got to respect that. You know, from one mighty pirate to another. You should really be careful out there on the sea, though. I remember one time-"

Ah. _That_ was what Luffy was waiting for. For a moment, she'd been a little worried. A nervous Ussop wasn't a problem, but an Usopp who didn't try to increase the liveliness of the atmosphere with lies was another thing entirely.

As he droned on about an adventure Luffy was certain had never happened, Luffy finally ate that piece of sausage. Usopp was far too into his creative process to have noticed.

* * *

Nami didn't have the slightest difficulty finding her captain, though she couldn't help but feel like she'd had to herd an ornery cat the entire way there. How anyone could manage to require as much help as Zoro did to find a clearly-trodden main road and walk in what was basically a straight line, she wasn't entirely sure, but that didn't mean she couldn't resent him. He'd wasted a lot of both of their time.

Luffy had been long gone by the time she reached the fence-post her new friend had waited at, and the light indicated it was getting ever-closer to midday. By that estimation, it had taken 2 hours to walk what should have taken a half an hour.

She could only consider herself lucky that Luffy's only obvious destination was so close by. The glutton couldn't have gone anywhere other than the restaurant named "Food".

Zoro was the first to the door; for the first time, Nami hadn't needed words to communicate a damn thing. If nothing else, they had shared Luffy knowledge in common; he already knew where his captain had gone.

He didn't wait for the navigator to catch up. By the time she reached the same portal, it had fallen shut. With a long-suffering sigh, she opened it again to see Zoro standing next to a booth, looking rapidly from his captain to a lanky teenager with a nose that could give the first mate's blades a run for their money where jabbing people's eyes out was concerned.

Luffy was busy jamming her face with food as the young man expounded on something to Zoro, who was beginning to look rather nonplussed. Nami could make out some of the words, as they had to do with enraged ghosts and penguins, of all things.

Luffy gave a couple of loud claps at an apparent climax and Zoro cracked a smile, however much annoyance came with it, and simply asked, "Where did the zombies come from, then?"

With only that little bit of input, Luffy's new friend began expounding on the new element to his tall tale, complete with wide, sweeping gestures. Zoro shoved Luffy beyond Nami's field of vision and took a seat, too.

Oh, God. The idiots were multiplying. She had no choice but to join them now.

Nami felt her patience wearing thinner by the moment. Today would be a very long day.


	13. We Are Bad at Adulting

Usopp had enjoyed the most refreshing brunch of his life in years. The proof was in the quality and light streaming through the windows and the amount of food the restaurant owner had to bring to the party of four. The sniper wasn't counting, but he was sure the socially-inept pirate captain with the straw hat had eaten _at_ _least_ sixteen pancakes, and the village elder who owned the restaurant didn't make tiny ones; his delicious flaky discs were the size of a dinner plate, and at least twice as thick.

That aside, his new friends had gotten him to blather on about himself and his adventures for at least two hours, which was impressive when he considered that the exercise was making him late for his secret biweekly rendezvous with Kaya. Very few things could hold that kind of claim on his time, but Luffy and her merry band had just turned out to be one of them.

An interested audience was a priceless thing. It often diminished with time as people became acquainted with a routine, and the people of Ingwa Gecko were not likely to find his antics as charming as they once had. Outside of maybe six people, no one took the time to just let him talk and feel… well, _normal_. And of those six persons, three were children, one was bound to her room, and the remaining two were, well, dead or absent. Most people needed a thriving social life that went beyond that.

Usopp wasn't the exception, despite not being the aforemention 'most people'. He doubted he was a genius, but he was bright enough to be so very, very _bored_. Perhaps it was due to this that he pined for an audience in the hundreds!… Though that was an ambition for some other time, far off in the distant future. However, for just that little while within the diner's four walls, he had a new audience; new stimulus. As a result, he was in a good mood when he left his village's favorite (and only) eatery.

Unfortunately, the universe didn't respect a good mood in the slightest. It gave the illusion of caring about good moods about as much as it cared about only punishing the wicked and rewarding the good; all of which pointed to it having a terrible track record. His simple desire to have a quiet afternoon with the girl he loved was just to be the most recent of its casualties.

Usopp was startled by a loud call from behind.

"Hey, Usopp! Where are ya goin'?" He had shared enough time with the group to know this voice belonged to Luffy. As of yet, she was still alone.

"Oh, just, you know, places..." Usopp said, turning back briefly and inwardly sighing. He had been happy enough to share part of his day with the oddball crew, but he hadn't expected to be tailed to his clandestine visit with the island's resident heiress. He'd excused himself from the pirates' company to avoid just that. Still, he was a polite fellow. He jammed his hands into his pockets to avoid communicating his disapproval overtly while trailing off and looking at anything but the person speaking to him.

"Places, huh? Sounds neat," Luffy said, her tone excited as she managed to catch up to her quarry. Usopp fought the urge to stop and stare until the girl's exuberance made sense."so what's first?"

Usopp sputtered. He hadn't meant to, but he had hoped she'd have taken the hint from his lack of interest. In retrospect, he should have known better. The girl in the straw hat hadn't really responded well to body language or indirect messages thus far. That ridiculous smile was plastered all over her face no matter what he did. He'd have to explain his desire to be something other than a tour guide like he would to a child.

"L-look, Luffy, the thing is-," he started, trying to find the appropriate words to reject her company in the friendliest way possible.

"Yeah?"

He made the mistake of looking into her eyes, and his words died. What was he so worried about? This girl was a harmless nusaince. Sure, somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered she was a pirate, a liar, and/or a madwoman, but that had buried itself under other bits of information he never used. Now, she was basically just another one of his underage lackeys, begging to tag along on something that could only generously be called an adventure. He found, in his heart-of-hearts, that he had a boring enough life that he considered taking her up on her offer.

In retrospect, Usopp would be impressed that she'd somehow made this transition so quickly. Just like he'd be impressed that she'd managed to kick his better judgement in the nether regions where Kaya was concerned.

"Well, er, following me is okay with your crew?" he said awkwardly, more afraid of Luffy's friends than the young woman herself. They were armed, though the ginger woman hid her weapon in a place she imagined no one would notice.

Luffy gave him a smile that would have sent him packing on account of its unnatural width but two hours ago. "Of course it is, Usopp. Nami said that she's way better off shopping without us," She hummed, then continued,"S'probably a good thing, too. Zoro really needs to take it easy right now."

Usopp looked at the little woman curiously, as if to ask her to elaborate on this. She didn't seem to realize until he made a confused hum.

"Oh!" she said, shrugging at his curiosity. "He got stabbed," her voice was nonchalant, but Usopp could see her jaw muscles clench every time she shut her mouth,"-by Bugles the Clown. Don't worry, though, I launched that jerk out of a cannon into space."

Something about the second part of her admission put Usopp to shame. For a moment, he really thought Luffy was vying for the rank of master liar between them. "You… launched a man… out of a _cannon…_ into _space_?!" he cried, despite his attempt to keep his composure.

"Probably." Luffy said, no hint of amusement in her face. Her tone was flat. "He definitely got shot into the sky by a cannon."

That response both deflated and terrified him. A decent storyteller would have capitalized on a moment like that. No, there could be little doubt that here, standing before him, was someone who had honestly launched someone into the upper atmosphere and didn't find the feat all that impressive.

Usopp was fairly certain that the pressure building up in his skull was making his eyes bulge out, because now Luffy was looking at him with mild concern, her eyebrows furrowed.

"Usopp?" she asked, tilting her head to the side.

"Ahahahaha…." his laughter was quiet and defeated. Honestly, he didn't have any godly thing to say now. She'd effectively broken him. "Do you… heheheh… launch people from cannons… often?"

"No." Luffy conceded, her eyes shifting to a passing cloud,"but there's a first time for everything."

It suddenly got very quiet. While shooting someone into space wasn't necessarily an efficient way to kill a pirate captain, it was certainly a quick way to kill a conversation. Unfortunately for Usopp's poor adrenal glands, it rose again as a zombie.

"How… do you normally solve problems, Luffy?" he asked. He could hear his voice. It was reaching a falsetto.

"I punch them until they go away." came the reply. It oozed with a promise of honesty. It was also supposed to be a joke. The thing about jokes, though, is that they don't tend to land when your audience assumes you are going to kill them the instant they anger the teller.

Usopp didn't dare respond with words for a few seconds. His vocal apparatus wouldn't allow it.

"Places?" Luffy gently prodded, alluding to the conversation that she'd so summarily killed half a minute ago.

"O-Oh, right." Usopp coughed into his hand, forcing his pulse to slow down before his stupid, cowardly little heart exploded. "We have places to go."

He had changed his mind again, though. That moment of being caught off-guard when he'd thought of Luffy as little more than a little kid was gone. The waif straddled the line with her mannerisms, sure, but she apparently walked a fine line between woman-child and TERRIFYING MONSTER. Maybe he shouldn't take him with her on his original errand, after all. Who knew what just a few seconds with Luffy would do to Kaya's fragile organs. Yet, even now, some part of him didn't dare tell her to up and leave.

It was the part of him that wanted to live.

Still, there were precautions he'd still be able to make. The murderer wasn't angry yet, and presumably would not be staying long.

"I'm going to take you to meet an old friend of mine, but I'm going to need you to promise not to do anything too weird." he said, trying to sound commanding.

Luffy crossed her arms and scrunched up her face in thought before answering. "I'm going to need you to explain what you mean. Is 'weird' different than 'insufferable' or 'stupid'? People keep changing their terms on me, and it's getting a little hard to follow."

Usopp couldn't stop his eyebrows from shooting up again. "Um… assume it means both?"

"Gotcha." She said, clapping a fist to an open palm resolutely. She drew herself up to stand with an impressive amount of gravitas, all things considered. "I, Monkey D. Luffy, promise not to bother Usopp's old friend by being weird."

Usopp knew he was staring. Nothing good ever came from a person who made an oath like that. It was the oldest trick in the book. Still, knees shaking, he couldn't force her hand.

"O-okay then. We'll be on our way."

* * *

Zoro hadn't taken very long to find a suitable place to sleep. He seldom did, as long as the sky wasn't dumping something liquid on his exposed head. He hated to admit that he was still in need of the sleep for anything other than his preference for having an ungodly amount of energy in reserve for when he needed it, but his stitches itched and the green meadow was calling him.

He could feel Nami's penetrating gaze as he found a nice, flat spot to flop backwards unceremoniously. He had no idea what she was looking for, but in absence of his captain, the threat she posed diminished even as the uneasy aura around her bloomed. He doubted that she even caught the slight muscle tremors that betrayed her fear.

She didn't initially say anything as she stood over him, written directions firmly clutched in her left hand.

He closed his eyes, still quirking his eyebrows. "Need something?" he asked, wanting to get any tedious conversation out of the way so that the witch would get on with her errands and leave him in peace.

She startled when he addressed her. He could hear it. Nevertheless, her voice carried an attempt to reach the authority that Luffy's carried without effort. "Roronoa, you will not leave this spot until I get back. The last thing we need is both of you idiots wandering off. I'm sure I'm going to have a hard enough time finding one of you, let alone both."

Zoro opened one eyelid lazily and asked the million-beri question that applied to Nami's efforts where their tiny crew was concerned at all times. "Then why bother?"

Nami's shoulders rose up like they belonged to a ticked-off cat. "I'm not going to be able to carry all the supplies back to the ship myself, now, am I?"

He yawned widely and crossed his arms behind his head."Fine, sure, whatever."

Nami brought two fingers to her face. "Well, _that_ inspires confidence."

The swordsman said nothing. He merely closed his eyes and ignored the sarcasm. "You're still here," he pointed out, his voice still carrying an apathy that caused Nami's teeth to clench, "so it can't be that bad."

He was insinuating something, and he took some pleasure in knowing that she was clever enough to be aware of that. The former bounty hunter believed annoying Nami was a pastime he shared with his captain, but whatever reasons Luffy had for annoying her were probably quite different from his own.

If she angry enough, she might say something incriminating. Thus, Zoro would have the proverbial high ground against any future threat she might pose.

Things didn't work out that way he wanted them to, though. She didn't ever really take the bait on the ship, and she wasn't doing it now. All she did was give an exasperated sigh and storm off.

* * *

Luffy was doing her best. She really, really was. She had bitten down any more attempts at conversation because even she could see how intimidated her fated nakama was. She hadn't meant to scare him. She'd thought he'd be impressed. She swore that from what she remembered, this really was how you got Usopp to like you.

Given that, she was surprised when they'd walked a way into the woods and he booked off running in a random direction. Was he supposed to do that? She didn't think he was supposed to do that. She felt disappointment tug at her face despite her best efforts while desperation worked with them to get her feet working.

The pleasant afternoon walk turned into a high-speed chase that put Luffy at a disadvantage. However familiar Ingwah Gecko felt to her subconscious, she couldn't anticipate his route through the brush and trees, and when he disappeared, she was unable to track him. She felt she should be able to, and screwed up her face and clenched her hands in some sort of effort to sense the sniper's presence without using her more dangerous powers or risking frightening him further. This, predictably, did not work.

She was well and truly ditched. If she had been anyone but herself in that moment, it probably wouldn't matter… but Luffy was still Luffy. Usopp was Usopp. He was supposed to… well, he couldn't actually leave her there, could he?

Despite being older than the seven-year-old left in the woods all alone without the means to defend herself, she felt a burning lump in her throat. She forced it down, but her eyes grew a little blurry.

It wasn't like she couldn't salvage the situation. She could cheat, but first she had to get over the feeling she had been cheated. It was irrational to feel entitled to his friendship, but she'd already earned it so many times over as someone else, and now she was being treated like a drunken peddler who pulled a knife by a nakama. Between that and the sounds of the forest, she slumped.

Self-pity wasn't useful. It was never useful. She wouldn't let it have her for more than a few seconds and she certainly wouldn't let it reduce her to tears for what anyone else would identify as a mere acquaintance, but she needed a moment. Abandonment was not her strong suit.

In the distance, Usopp couldn't agree with the sentiment more, though he needed a lot of them and needed to maintain his aerobic trance during the entire ordeal. If any of her crewmates asked, they got seperated. If any of his friends asked, he narrowly escaped from an ancient abomination maintaining her human guise by means of a magical straw hat.

* * *

(A/N) I am a ghost. Boo. I didn't trouble my beta with this because I disappeared for a year and that would be unfair. Also, please forgive the short chapter. It's been in my computer, unuploaded and nearly finished for way too long.


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